At The Capitol

The other night looked like there might be a good sunset, so I hurried off to try to get a few pictures. I ended up driving by the State Capitol, but the sunset there didn't really pan out. So I walked around the grounds and went by the memorial to the Little Rock Nine. The memorial features life-size statues of the Nine, who helped end segregation in Arkansas by bravely walking into Little Rock Central High in 1957. The statue at the front of the group is of Elizabeth Eckford, and it looks very similar to the iconic photograph of her stoically walking to the school while being pursued by a crazed-looking mob.



The memorial is titled Testament and was placed on the Capitol grounds in 2005, nearly 50 years after the students made history. The sculptures were created by John Deering, who is also the editorial cartoonist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.



The statues are placed off to the side of the Capitol, but are defiantly facing the windows of the Governor's office - "very seat of power that fueled the conflict and forged their remarkable futures."



I headed back over to the front of the Capitol, which was fairly quiet. Besides a family taking pictures on the steps, there wasn't anyone else around (besides security, which drove by about every 15 minutes). This is a big change from a few months ago, when there were nightly protests in front of the Capitol. Now you can't see much evidence of that - there are still some boarded-up windows on some of the buildings along Capitol Avenue that haven't been fixed yet for some reason. And it looks like there are some big and bright spotlights now shining down onto the two confederate monuments that stand on the Capitol grounds (to help protect them from vandalism, maybe?). These two monuments are now the only monuments to the confederacy still standing in Little Rock, and our Governor has stated that he is open to having them moved. Which I fully support, I think there are much better things about our state that we can showcase and memorialize.

Anyways, here's one last shot from the Capitol as it was starting to get dark...