Crisis at Central High

The story of the efforts to bring about racial integration and the attempts to defeat it are well-defined in this excellent made for television movie in 1981.

Joanne Woodward has never been better as English teacher Elizabeth Huckaby. Her memoirs detail the emotionally charged academic year of 1957 when the school was ordered to admit black students.

Looking at Ms. Woodward, she represented the embodiment of an English teacher far outdoing the comical Eve Arden in "Our Miss Brooks."

Teaching became an absolute disaster that year with student minds concentrated on the picketing and racial taunts being hurled at black students attempting to enter. With it all, Huckaby attempts to conduct classes, as emotions run high throughout the school and country.

Woodward's success as Huckaby is depicted by her being a victim of the situation as well. Finally, we see her in a role where she is not emotionally entangled because of her own personal hangups. She is the way she is because of the situation around her.

Those black students who arrive face an awesome situation. Insulted, bullied and threatened, one decides to leave but the others will stick with it.

What an academic year in this engrossing film!

I first saw this movie in 1981, the first time shown on television. I likewise have the video. Most of it is fact and the other Hollywood. Back then a student wouldn't scream uncontrollably at a Principal, Superintendent and the school board like Donna Kirby did. After Minijean Brown was expelled, Donna was passing out cards one down eight to go. The Boy's vice Principal got one. She was called in and was suspended. Yet she screamed and her Mother took it up. In real life Donna would have been expelled, not to mention time in Juvenile Hall. Her Mother would have been arrested for attacking Mrs. Huckaby with an umbrella. The school authorities back then knew how to handle nonconforming students. That's our trouble today. We need to get control back in our schools. It wouldn't have bothered me, if I had been in school there, at the time it happened. My parents were living in Little Rock, when this all happened. People carried drinks to the National Guardsmen, protecting the black students. I have gone to school with black children. Today there is still hatred towards black people. Donna Kirby should have been given a whipping, with a nice long leather strap, for her screaming, as well as causing trouble. I would have expelled her no questions asked. She even told the Superintendent, he should be fired. She wouldn't have talked that way here, where I live. Our Superintendent would have buried her alive, in the school yard.

I agree with Richard Fuller's review completely. There should have been a movie done from one of the student's point of view. Warriors Don't Cry, the novel my Melba Patillo Beals, one of the 9 students is a poignant memoir of her life during this time. This should be made into a movie. What kind of real perspective could this principal offer? A more compelling movie should now be done from the point of view of one of the 9 students. I've read a few and Warriors Don't Cry is the most compelling. It would be interesting also to do a follow-up or sequel movie using the sequel to Warriors Don't Cry. On Amazon, it's called "White is a State of Mind." I've read it also and it too is an excellent story.

Had this been an actual historical event from the fifties about nine white kids, you can bet your bottom dollar Hollywood would have made a movie about it and updated every decade since the sixties. It would be a given.

As it is, Hollywood's only venture into the Little Rock High situation was to make a movie about it , . . . . based on the principal's point of view.

Virtually nothing of the kids thoughts, ideas, how they felt.

Nothing about Minne Jean's chili that got her expelled. We did see Elizabeth Eckford's lone walk to school, but we heard nothing from her.

We do hear from the girl photographed screaming at her and the picture would be circulated worldwide (the two women have since become friends and appeared together about that moment), but it amounted to very little insight.

Joanne Woodward works as the principal, but there is virtually nothing for her to do. The story was all in the children and the woman who supervised getting them to school and having to evacuate them when the rioting would get out of control.

IT was their story.

Nothing about the lonliness of the children, nothing about Ernest Green getting no applause when he graduated.

Typical Hollywood movie in that it was incredibly inaccurate.