One Step Up, Two Steps Back

Last week was Santa Lucia Day in Sweden, and the American Club was having its annual Santa Lucia luncheon at the Grand Hotel. Like most ex-pats who are used to luncheons Stateside at the Marriott, the Grand Hotel was an amazing experience for lunch.

The Grand Hotel is an ornate edifice that has been hosting the elite people of the world in Stockholm since 1874. The American Club event was being held in the Hall of Mirrors where the first Nobel Prize ceremonies were held.

The guest speaker was Gloria Ray Karlmark, who was one of the Little Rock Nine. The Little Rock Nine was a group of teenagers who opened the Little Rock, Arkansas Central High School to desegregation in 1957. The Civil War had been over for 92 years, yet the centuries old prejudices were still running high. Ms. Karlmark opened her remarks with the words, “Fifty years ago, I was called a Negro.” She then outlined the chilling story of a 14 year old girl being pushed down on the floorboards of a strange car and being spirited away by white Little Rock police officers from her high school on her first day of school. Having to be sneaked out of your high school because your presence there would be the catalyst for a riot. How the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division was stationed in the school’s halls and each of the nine students had a private soldier to protect them from their neighbors.

While the story unfolded, I thought about my first year in high school and how I stumbled through my first steps in teen years. I tried to imagine what kind of pressure being the object of jibes, innuendo, racial slurs and epitaphs and outright physical threats would have put on me. Oh, and by the way, you have to read the next 15 pages of biology and be ready for a pop quiz tomorrow. Could I have the courage to desire and attain an education in a school that didn’t want me there so vehemently that the U.S. Army had to escort me to class?

My second thought was that the granddaughter of a slave was now standing in the Hall of Mirrors in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden. It seemed that in 1957, we had not made much progress in racial relations. Have we come any further in the last fifty? Did that fact that a slave’s granddaughter was standing in front of a group of tolerant Swedes signify any progress?

Not if you were aware of the reason for Ms. Karlmark being in that mirrored hall. She was there to raise money for the Little Rock Nine Foundation. The non-profit Foundation, founded by the original nine students themselves, has a simple goal. Reach out to nine needy students from around the United States and fund two years of extended higher education. The only repayment from the recipients is that they mentor the students who follow them.

Ms. Karlmark quoted some statistics from the United States Census Bureau that were startling. Statistics like 25% of white students who start high school never graduate. However, minority students drop out at a rate of 50%. Almost 25% of those students live below the poverty level. They have little access to teachers and, even in the white schools they are placed in, little access to the resources needed to succeed.

I was embarrassed to be an American sitting and listening to such a litany of failure being told to an audience of my Swedish friends and neighbors. It is fortunate that the Swedes would probably find such a concept so preposterous due to the full and free access to education that Sweden has. That a country, like the United States, that so espouses its greatness to the rest of the world, cannot come to terms with keeping its citizens educated is disturbing. Disturbing because of the way it treats its most needy citizens. Disturbing because the United States sets itself up for falling behind in the competitive world economy. Ms. Karlmark called for a cooperation between the Government and Corporations in funding schools and scholarships for deserving students.

We were so concerned with education and civil rights in 1957 that we brought out an entire Army Division to insure it would be instituted. It makes me wonder if we have progressed or regressed since those days in Little Rock fifty years ago?