Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by David Margolick

On Sept 4, 1957, the lives of 15-year-olds Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan became irrevocably connected when they were photographed together the day Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas was desegregated. Hazel’s hateful taunting directed at Elizabeth’s African American heritage captured the great divide that separated white and black Americans. Years later, Elizabeth and Hazel reconciled, but eventually they found the gulf between them too vast to bridge and parted company. Margolick’s analysis of the lives of two women caught in their nation’s failure to see all people as equal in God’s eyes is painful, thought-provoking, and hopeful despite its unhappy ending. (Yale University Press)