Movie Review

Perhaps the most telling part of this documentary about the actions of the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC) during the 1958-1959 school year, when Orval Faubus closed all four Little Rock high schools rather than proceed with desegregation, is the statement at the end of the video that "Sandra Hubbard, writer/producer/director of the documentary, was in the eleventh grade when Faubus closed the high schools. Due to the efforts of the Women's Emergency Committee she was able to graduate from Hall High School in the class of 1960." To the people of Arkansas, and Little Rock in particular, the WEC's battle against Faubus and the segregationists to reopen the public high schools and promote public education (not integration) is the one bright spot to emerge from the aftermath of the Central High crisis of 1957. This video recounts the story of the WEC during that crucial year with lots of well-deserved praise along the way.

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Ironically, the video introduces the topic with four men commenting on the good work of the WEC in getting the schools reopened. Their comments include the statement "God bless the women." This is followed by a brief recounting of the events that occurred in Little Rock in September 1957, effectively told with black-and-white archival footage and still photos of the Little Rock Nine, Governor Faubus, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the 101st Airborne of the United States Army. With the exception of Daisy Bates, women are not mentioned until summer 1958, when three women, the Little Rock matriarch Adolphine Fletcher Terry, Vivion Brewer, and Velma Powell, met while organizing a dinner to honor Harry Ashmore, the Arkansas Gazette editor and recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. Hubbard makes good use of an archival audio interview with Brewer and the last interview with Powell in this section.

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