Elizabeth Eckford...

Instead of listening to the Oscars last night, I heard Elizabeth Eckford reminiscing about her role in the Civil Rights movement, when, aged 15, she was one of nine black students to enroll at the previously segregated high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. When she saw the soldiers of the National Guard, she assumed they were there to offer protection to the students; instead, under orders from the Governor of Arkansas, they barred her way.

In her own words… “I stood looking at the school; it looked so big! Just then the guards let some white students through. The crowd was quiet. I guess they were waiting to see what was going to happen. When I was able to steady my knees, I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in. He didn’t move. When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet and then the other guards moved in and they raised their bayonets. They glared at me with a mean look and I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me. They moved closer and closer. Somebody started yelling, "Drag her over to this tree! Let's take care of that nigger!”

The last recorded lynching in the USA occurred as recently as 1981, when a young black man, Michael Donald, was picked up at random by KKK members, taken into woodland near Mobile, Alabama, beaten to death and then hung from a tree.

The photograph, shot in 1967 by Will Counts, shows Elizabeth Eckford running the gauntlet of hatred as she approached the school gates, and became one of the most iconic images of the twentieth century…