????NEIL DIAMOND ~ BLACKBIRD

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Sincere thanks and appreciation to Marquette University for the inclusion of their video “Little Rock Nine” 5:23.
Website - https://www.marquette.edu/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@MarquetteU

'Blackbird': The Beatles song inspired by the Little Rock Nine.

“True reconciliation can occur only when we honestly acknowledge our painful, but shared, past.” - Elizabeth Eckford

When Sir Paul McCartney visited Little Rock, he told the crowd about how the civil rights movement and the Little Rock Nine inspired one of the Beatles' biggest hits

Paul McCartney wrote this song about the civil rights struggle for African Americans after reading about race riots in the US. He penned it in his kitchen in Scotland not long after an incident in Little Rock when the federal courts forced the racial desegregation of the Arkansas capital's school system.

"I was sitting around with my acoustic guitar and I'd heard about the civil rights troubles that were happening in the '60s in Alabama, Mississippi, and Little Rock in particular," he told GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly). "I just thought it would be really good if I could write something that if it ever reached any of the people going through those problems, it might give them a little bit of hope. So, I wrote 'Blackbird.'"

Paul McCartney met two of the women who helped inspire the Beatles’ White Album classic ‘Blackbird’ backstage at his Little Rock, Arkansas concert Saturday night.

The women, Thelma Mothershed Wair and Elizabeth Eckford, were two members of the Little Rock Nine, a group of nine black students who faced discrimination and the lasting impact of segregation after enrolling in the all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957, following the Supreme Court’s historic Brown vs. the Board of Education decision.

After the Little Rock Nine enrolled, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus protested their entrance into the school, which in turn sparked the Little Rock Crisis. It was these events that inspired a young McCartney to pen the song “Blackbird.”

The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrolment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In the famous photos of the event, one teenage girl can be clearly seen screaming at Eckford. That girl was Hazel Bryan. Bryan and Eckford became friends 40 years later when they both attended an anniversary commemoration event. They posed for a “reconciliation” poster together. The photograph was taken by Counts, the same photographer who took the original image. But by early 2000, their friendship ended. Their relationship was strained for other reasons, Eckford believed Bryan didn't own up to her past as well as she should have, and began to suspect she was too much of an attention-seeker. The two were never able to mend the tension and their friendship sadly went downhill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLfJSAU4Ax8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPVOO5sugMY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym8rdtq-KBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfULO-nQ_JY

BLACKBIRD
Paul McCartney
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free
Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night
Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night
Into the light of the dark black night
Into the light of the dark black night

NEIL DIAMOND - 2010
Album: Dreams