It’s among the most famous images from the Civil Rights Movement: a young black girl, clutching her books, walks away from Little Rock Central High School, while a crowd of white people heckle her. But what ever became of the people involved? David Margolick tracked them down, and wrote Elizabeth and Hazel, a book about the two most prominent girls in the photo. In honor of MLK Day, Slate has re-published a short excerpt from the piece, which discusses what Hazel (the snarling young white girl in the picture) did with the rest of her life, and the strange relationship the two women formed in their later years.
Who doesn’t know that face?
It’s the face of a white girl—she was only 15 years old, but everyone always thinks her older than that, and judges her accordingly—shouting at an equally familiar, iconic figure: a sole black school girl dressed immaculately in white, her mournful and frightened eyes hidden behind sunglasses, clutching her books and walking stoically away from Little Rock Central High School on Sept. 4, 1957—the date when, in many ways, desegregation first hit the South where it hurt.
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