She was 15. Think about that. Think of how fragile you were at that age, how the smallest slights seemed like life-ending catastrophes. How you (wrongly) felt like you were the center of everyone's scorn and mockery. Imagine that bundle of nervous hormones striding through a crowd of people who are, in fact, all screaming directly at you.

Behind them, you see the fucking military and realize they aren't there to protect you from the mob -- they're there on behalf of that mob. Treating you like you're a suicide bomber there to level the building, rather than a kid who wants to quietly learn stuff alongside everybody else. Someone who just wants to fit in.

And that screamer stalking Eckford through the crowd? Her name is Hazel Bryan.

Will Counts/Arkansas Democrat
"I SAID IT'S HAZEL BRYAN!"

She was also 15, and in a saner alternate universe, they probably would have been classmates, or even friends. Instead, she screamed threats and racial slurs, and later ranted to reporters about how it was the whites whose rights were being violated. But it was that photo that was destined to outlive her by decades or centuries. Her worst moment, frozen in time forever.

Now here comes the first -- but not the last -- twist in our story.

She later went to college, got a bachelor's degree in history, joined the army, had two sons, and became a substitute teacher. However, Eckford constantly struggled with depression and PTSD, and would sometimes go years or even decades between jobs. See, because she's a human being, not a face in a photo, and shit like this leaves scars.

Will Counts/Arkansas Democrat
Also scarring: getting goddamn rocks thrown at you.

Meanwhile, the photo of Bryan became famous worldwide. She became the screaming symbol of ignorant white supremacy. Her parents were surprised by her sudden notoriety and pulled her out of the school (she never attended a single class at the school she was so angrily trying to preserve for her race). She was transferred to another high school, but dropped out when she was 17, after which she got married and had kids. Then, something kind of miraculous happened.

In the next few years after the photo, Bryan listened to speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and watched as black protesters were attacked for daring to eat at the counter of a segregated diner. She read books on black history and started volunteering to work with underprivileged black teenagers and mothers. She -- gasp! -- realized she was wrong.

Will Counts/Arkansas Democrat
When you become a worldwide avatar of hatred, you gotta at least wonder if you may be part of the problem.

Then, one day in the early 1960s, she looked up her old classmate's name in the phone book and called her to apologize. Decades later, the two became friends. They were constantly invited to events to commemorate the anniversary of the Little Rock Nine, and eventually met in person in 1997. After that, they would visit each other's houses, take adult classes, and team up to go to schools and tell kids how awesome life can be when you stop picking your friends based on their skin color. Hell, they were even interviewed by Oprah together (the ultimate best friend bonding experience).

See! Happy ending! If it was a movie, here's where the credits would roll. We got a symbol of how America beat racism once and for all.

Via Authentichistory.com
You can almost hear "We Are Family" start playing when looking at that photo. Except ...

Only it's not a movie, and what happened next is the part that will help you understand, well, everything.

Soon, Massery could sense the tension (it was hard to miss). The rest of the Little Rock Nine didn't like how she had suddenly become part of their story, invited onto the stage at events intended to celebrate their courage -- you know, since they were the ones who faced down the vicious mob and armed soldiers. The people of Little Rock didn't like how, through Massery, they were all being portrayed as screaming bigots (locals have insisted that many students at the school had no problem with integration).

The St. Louis Argus
This isn't the kind of publicity anyone wants for their hometown.

All of a sudden, it seemed like Massery was getting more shit for apologizing than the people who'd never shown the slightest remorse (or even stopped being racist). She had no doubt done a courageous thing (how many of you could have made that first phone call?), but she at times came off like she expected to be treated like a hero for it, as if tolerance is a generous gift bestowed upon others instead of the absolute minimum a person can do to avoid being a piece of shit.

So at some point, she said "Fuck this."

George Hunt/U.S. Postal Service
"If I'm not going to make the commemorative stamp, then what's the point?"

Maybe not those exact words. The two of them haven't spoken in years. Eckford now openly criticizes Massery in public, implying that she never fully understood what she was even apologizing for.

Some of you have already guessed why this is relevant.

This seems hard to forget.

Tell us this story doesn't mimic American culture as a whole -- a country where the biggest obstacle to progress isn't angry mobs chanting racial slurs, but a much larger group of people who don't consider themselves racist but still can't understand why "those people" can't simply move on. People who know how to say all the right things, but reveal themselves to not truly understand the history mere seconds later, usually right after the word "but."

"Of course slavery was wrong, but it's been 150 years ..."

"Of course Martin Luther King was a hero, but if he was alive today, surely he would admit ..."

"I'm not racist, but ..."

Via Authentichistory.com
You get the picture.

And so on. It's not necessarily malicious -- it's an inability or unwillingness to understand. A people who will say they know racism is bad, but in reality know only that it's bad to be known as a racist. They may even make the grand gesture, volunteering at a soup kitchen before taking a selfie with a ladle of beef stew and posting it with the caption "#makingadifference." They'll talk to black friends or co-workers and join them in shaking their heads at a story of a burned church painted with swastikas. "Don't worry, I'm one of the good ones! I'm one of you!"

But then there's quiet frustration when the others don't seem to agree with that second statement. "No, you're not one of us. You don't know what it's like. You can't know." When you say you do, you're not being empathetic; you're being insulting. It's like a drunk driver who slams into your car, then when apologizing later can't resist adding, "I know how you feel! Remember, I also was in a car accident that night! It was awful!" Proving they don't get it by insisting that they get it.

Until a lynch mob has come for you, there's no understanding someone who's lived through it.

Then the annoyance sets in, the unspoken question of "When will this ever be enough?" followed quickly by "Why bother at all?" You've said you're sorry, and the burden is now on them to accept it, dammit.

Again, we're not mind readers. We're not saying this is exactly how Hazel Bryan Massery would have expressed it if given the chance (she stopped doing press years ago, insisting the whole thing was a mistake). We're just saying that in her quest to not be a living symbol of America's struggle with racism, she probably wound up being exactly that.

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