The Little Rock 9

It is Monday, I am twelve years old, summer still feel like summer to me... Ernest Green My elementary school principal was white I only had one white teacher, she was named after the juice the astronauts took into space, Tang, I got some Tang at home...did you hear about the little girls who got killed while we was in Sunday School yesterday? Elizabeth Eckford I live in Baltimore and so do you, your people the raw and stinky crew, my daddy a big shot on the Avenue your daddy can't buy a pair of shoes... Jefferson Thomas One little girl was named Addie Mae, just liek my aunt from South Carolina, and when I come home from church everybody was cryin about the news from Alabama...I know Alabama Alabama was on the math test today— If you going 65 miles an hour leaving Richmond near where my cousin live and you drive for twelve hours straight will get you to Alabama? hell no, cause Alabama in hell ... Terrance Roberts The bus is hot, the white neighborhood full of angry faces just two miles from where we live, angry faces I see at night when I look out the window and wonder why I have to sit next to white children to be smart...I was smart all the time, my mama told me so when I did things the right way, extra things, good things, smart is knowin when somethin's missing... Carlotta Walls LaNier I like Malcom X because he looks like me when I am so mad I can't stand myself, when my cousins take my model car shelf down, break up my cats and then dare me to fight, when I have to walk from the white school home through the white neighborhood when I miss the bus or when I get a beatin for what my friend did and he get a beatin, too, but mine hurt more because he did it, not me, so I like Malcom X. He so mean, Mr. Green, he so mean...you got to be mean in Chicago... Minnijean Brown When I was fourteen a boy kissed me when we were walking to the movies, he sneaked me, and I tried not to smile because kissing is a sin and all the while I was so full of hallelujah on the inside, on the way to the movies we go to now because somebody made a way somehow, standing in lines with protest signs, dogs barking all around, so I make sure I sound educated when Henry sneaks to kiss me on the way to the movies...we have all kinds of movies in Philadelphia... Gloria Ray Karlmark New York is faster than yesterday, been here and gone before you remember it ain't here no more, we go downtown in the middle of tomorrow when it still be today, New York is faster than yesterday, I got a quarter for your ten dollar bill, give it to me I'll pay your cleaners bill because New York is faster than yesterday, and a high school diploma is all a genius like me will ever need in a city where a thrill is more to me if you will believe me...and believe me you will... Thelma Mothershed What a word will do, my momma used to say at night when her work was done, rearing back in that chair of hers with the stuffin fallin out of the arms, what a word will do when you know what words are for, she would say, layin her head back, closing her eyes and settling down inside some dream. She never told us her dreams when we asked her, she just said we would know when the moon turned over three times and ghosts rose up out of the sea. Mama was half out of this world, in California we all the way in it... Melba Patillo Beals Little Rock Nine, Shaking the line Between white no And black oh yes, I'll walk all over What is mine, thanks To Little Rock Nine.