Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford was the first of a group that came to be known as the Little Rock Nine. She was met by a mob of white segregationists, many of them students, who screamed, spat and threatened her.
News cameras and photographers were all over that day, but there is one picture in particular that came to represent that incident to the world: that of Eckford with her back to an advancing crowd, with one young white woman screaming at her — another teenager named Hazel Bryan. In later weeks, President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort the children to school.
"Here is where, in most documentaries, the music swells and the credits roll," author David Margolick tells NPR's Audie Cornish. But there was more to the story, of course, and Margolick's book Elizabeth and Hazel picks up where most leave off.
