The inaugural Hot Springs Book Festival was a success earlier this month, with multiple events seeing capacity crowds and a civil rights icon making an appearance.
The festival ran from April 7-9 and featured authors David Hill, Bitty Martin, Corabel Shofner, Ayana Gray, Eurydice Stanley and Elizabeth Eckford, a member of the Little Rock Nine.
The festival, which was held at several venues across the city, was hosted by the Garland County Library, the Literacy Council of Garland County and the Adult Education Department at National Park College.
"It was a success ... I think everything went really well," Erin Barber, the library's marketing manager, said.
"Absolutely, I mean it surpassed our expectations, and especially after having to reschedule it initially from the fall, so it is now officially the first annual book festival," Paul Kagebein, the library's adult services programmer, said.
"We're already planning next year. We sent out a little feedback thing to everybody that was signed up and we got a lot of great suggestions that I haven't shared with the committee yet, but we got a lot of positive feedback from it and some direction for next year maybe," Baber said.
All of the events "were pretty well attended," she said, noting Hill's event at The Vapors was "kind of the highlight because it was just a special event." Hill, author of the bestseller "The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice," kicked things off with a discussion at The Legendary Vapors, 315 Park Ave.
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"They were all a success," Kagebein said, with both the Hill and Martin events fully booked.
Another popular part of the festival was children's book author Shofner being able to visit a local school. "We spent Friday morning taking her around to Cutter Morning Star where she gave a book talk to them and they had done some book clubs leading up to the program, so she had a great turnout there, and really engaged with the students," Baber said.
The closing event was the presentation by Eckford and Stanley, who cowrote, along with Grace Stanley, "The Worst First Day: Bullied While Desegregating Central High," held at Main Street Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School.
"Sixty-five years ago, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford was in the foreground of a photo of an angry mob spewing hatred and threatening violence towards her because she attempted to go to the all-white Little Rock Central High School," Adam Webb, the library's director, said in introducing Eckford at the event.
Shortly after Eckford started her talk, she was joined on stage by Stanley, who asked Eckford questions about her first day at the school, and about the rest of her time there.
"I learned that ordinary people, in extraordinary times can do extraordinary things. We all started out with individual moments wanting to go to that school, but it didn't take long because of the opposition against us and because the support we got in letters from people all across the United States and across the world, to learn that a lot of people were depending on us. Us locally, we saw the attempt to desegregate North Little Rock schools end in one day and we had seen other attempts to make change that ended very, very soon, so we knew that a lot depended on us," Eckford said.
"When you're trying to do something extremely hard, sometimes you can hold on longer if you know that the cost of quitting will impact so many people," Eckford said, "If it's so important to a lot of people, it actually compels you to try to hold on a little longer."
"Now, was there ever a time when you felt like you couldn't do it anymore and you quit?" Stanley asked.
"I called my grandfather, my father worked a split shift at the train station, and so at the time I called my grandfather I think, my father couldn't come pick me up. It was never safe enough for us to ride a bus, so we had to be -- we were taken to school either by parents or neighbors. I knew my father wasn't available so I called my grandfather," Eckford said.
"My grandfather would squeeze a nickel and chase a buffalo. He was a very, very stingy person, but he closed the store, lost profit, to come and pick me up. It was a demonstration for his love for me and for family. I recognized that then. Because my grandfather felt about profit -- you may remember the Ferengi people from 'Star Trek' ... the Ferengi people were so devoted to profit that they would sell desiccated body parts, my grandfather was really devoted to profit but he was also devoted to family," she said.
Stanley also spoke about when weapons were confiscated from people outside the school.
"In the book there's pictures of some of the weapons that were collected from the crowd. There's a bullwhip, there are knives, there's a billy club. There's ... brass knuckles ... ice picks. Keep in mind, these were high school students that were just trying to go to school. Why did you want to go to Little Rock Central High?" Stanley asked.
Eckford said at her previous school "there would be four students standing around waiting for a chance to look through a microscope. I knew that Central had more subjects, more equipment and had more to educate students by."
She noted there were some disadvantages to going to Central.
"What the advantage, as I look back on the Negro schools, was that we had teachers who cared about us. We had, when they learned that they would have to compete in the future integrated schools, went back and got their master's degrees, we had teachers who were well qualified," she said.
"At Central, I had a teacher who taught 'The Lost Cause' mythology. I had never heard that before. When she said that Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest organized the Knights of the Camelia, the Ku Klux Klan, for the protection of white women, I was outraged but I noticed that nobody else in the class seemed surprised. They must have heard these kinds of messages before because, by Arkansas law, that kind of stuff could be taught," Eckford said.
Eckford "was such a passionate and engaging speaker, I was extremely impressed that she had so much energy for an 80-year-old," Kagebein said. "I personally got to spend time with her, giving her transportation here to Hot Springs, and she's just a wonderful person."