Voting Station

Hazel Bryan (Massery)

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Student

The Resume

    (January 31, 1942- )
    Born in Little Rock, Arkansas
    Attended Little Rock Central High School during the school integration crisis of the mid-1950s
    Photographed shouting at Elizabeth Eckford from behind during the Little Rock Nine's first day of school (Sept. 04, 1957)
    Later became a civil right activist; also entered into a widely-publicized friendship with Eckford during the mid-1990s
    Story was chronicled in David Margolick’s book, 'Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock' (2011)
    Married Antoine Massery

Why she might be annoying:

    In the photo, she was reportedly shouting at Eckford, 'Go home, ni**er! Go back to Africa!'
    She was one of three white girls following Eckford after the National Guard turned her away, chanting 'Two, four, six, eight! We don't want to integrate!'
    A New York Times reporter chronicling the incident wrote that she 'was screaming, just hysterical, just like with Elvis Presley where these kids are fainting with hysteria.'
    She finally met with Eckford again in 1997, to do publicity shots 'making up with' Eckford on the old school grounds (her sincerity and true motivations were almost immediately second-guessed, although if anything it was the city of Little Rock that sought to 'cash in').
    The two famously struck up a friendship after the meeting, but it became strained within only a few years.
    As Eckford told it: '[Hazel] wanted me to be cured and be over it and for this not to go on... She wanted me to be less uncomfortable so that she wouldn't feel responsible anymore. [But] true reconciliation can occur only when we honestly acknowledge our painful, but shared, past.'
    Hazel, meanwhile, had developed a less conclusive view on the matter: 'I think she still - at times we have a little… well, the honeymoon is over and now we're getting to take out the garbage.'
    The iconic photo turns up annually - usually during Black History Month - as a sign of the shear ugliness of the racism and hate faced by African-Americans during the Civil Rights movement, even among 'pretty white girls.'

Why she might not be annoying:

    She grew up in a poor neighborhood, only a few blocks away from Eckford's own residence.
    She admitted to having been caught up in the excitement of the moment without necessarily understanding why she was yelling at Eckford other than that 'everyone else was doing it' (peer pressure).
    She received hate messages and death threats within days of the photo's publication.
    Her parents felt sufficiently threatened by the attention their daughter was receiving that they (ironically) transferred her out of Central High for her own safety.
    The experience resulted in her becoming more political (she wasn't at the time the photo was taken), veering into peace activism and actively supporting Martin Luther King.
    Later in life, she did social work with unmarried black women and took underprivileged black teenagers on field trips.
    She took the initiative of privately contacting Elizabeth several years after the incident, apologizing tearfully (Eckford accepted - for decades declining to give Hazel's name in interviews).
    Her reasoning for attempting to make amends with Eckford was the realization that one day her children would come to know that 'the snarling girl in the history books was their mother.'
    Her friendship with Eckford ended less because of their own shortcomings than because of outside pressures (the other members of the Little Rock Nine particularly weren't happy with Eckford for befriending her).
    Its honestly surprising that their friendship got as far as it did (they went to flower shows, made joint appearances at schools, and even shared mineral baths together). She helped Eckford to 'come out of her shell' and deal with the pain of her experience more openly.
    She was probably a victim of circumstance/scapegoat who unwittingly became a symbol of intolerance (actual diehard segregationists threw her under the bus, claiming she gave them a bad name).

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 11 Votes: 63.64% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 8 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying