She [Melba's mother] would tell us the story of the lone black man who was trying to integrate the law school. In the classroom, he was forced to sit confined by a white picket fence erected around his desk and chair.

Mother [Lois Marie Pattillo] began meeting with a few others from our community who were also determined to be admitted to the graduate school of education at the university.

My mother was one of the first few blacks to integrate the University of Arkansas, graduating in 1954.

When she began graduate school, our people [blacks] couldn't attend classes with whites at the University of Arkansas. After much grumbling and dickering, white folks had begun to allow small departments to integrate, class by class.

I have only found the strength to visit five times in thirty years because of the uneasy feeling the city gives me. Three of those visits have been since Bill and Hillary Clinton took over the governor's mansion, because they set a tone that made me feel safer here.