A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School

Carlotta Walls LaNier · Lisa Frazier Page

Aug 2009 · Sold by One World

About this ebook

“A searing and emotionally gripping account of a young black girl growing up to become a strong black woman during the most difficult time of racial segregation.”—Professor Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School
 
“Provides important context for an important moment in America’s history.”—Associated Press

When fourteen-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the stairs of Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she and eight other black students only wanted to make it to class. But the journey of the “Little Rock Nine,” as they came to be known, would lead the nation on an even longer and much more turbulent path, one that would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and forever change the landscape of America.
 
For Carlotta and the eight other children, simply getting through the door of this admired academic institution involved angry mobs, racist elected officials, and intervention by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was forced to send in the 101st Airborne to escort the Nine into the building. But entry was simply the first of many trials. Breaking her silence at last and sharing her story for the first time, Carlotta Walls has written an engrossing memoir that is a testament not only to the power of a single person to make a difference but also to the sacrifices made by families and communities that found themselves a part of history.

Ratings and reviews

A Mighty Long Way is a description of the desegregation of Central High School as seen through the eyes of Carlotta Walls, the youngest of the Little Rock Nine. Carlotta relates how naïve she was about the desegregation process in the days prior to the entrance into the all-white high school. Later she reveals in her descriptions her feelings of anger about what happens to her, her family and friends. In the end of the book, she conveys how she came to be at peace with the events and her sense of hope due to the election of a biracial president. This memoir is a touching account that strongly conveys the author’s feelings and perspective but the other people with whom she interacts are not presented as clearly defined personalities. The book is an optional purchase recommended for grades seven and up, in school and public libraries for collections needing information about the civil rights time-period.

Carlotta is someone who believe that no one should suffer being judged and bullied as how she did, and that everyone should be treated the same where there is peace between people and between races

About the author

Carlotta Walls LaNier attended Michigan State University and graduated from Colorado State College, now the University of Northern Colorado, on whose board of trustees she sits. After working for the YWCA, she founded her own real estate brokerage firm, LaNier and Company. A sought-after lecturer, LaNier speaks across the country, and she has received the Congressional Medal of Honor and two honorary doctorate degrees. She is the mother of two children, Whitney and Brooke, and lives in Englewood, Colorado, with her husband, Ira.

Lisa Frazier Page, an editor and award-winning reporter at The Washington Post, is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream. A graduate of New Orleans’s Dillard University, Page holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She grew up in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband. They have four children.