Gloria

Gloria Ray was fourteen years old when she was stopped by armed white soldiers from starting at Little Rocks Central High School in Arkansas. The year was 1957 and the state’s governor refused to allow her and eight other black youths to enter the all-white school.

That day my childhood ended, says Gloria today.

Gloria Ray and the other teenagers of The Little Rock Nine were the first to act on the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling that segregation of black and white children in American schools was unconstitutional. Arkansas’ resistance was so strong and violent that President Dwight Eisenhower was forced to deploy elite armed troops to escort the nine black youths to school. The incident made world news and became a pawn in the Cold War, as well as becoming a shocking exposure of racist America.

The nine young people in The Little Rock Nine endured harassment, death threats and violence, and their parents and siblings were hit hard, as were those who supported their fight for justice. Gloria Ray would later marry a Swedish designer and move to Sweden.

Now she has told her story to Elisabeth Åsbrink.

GLORIA. In the shadow of white supremacy is the story of an icon of the American civil rights movement, and of the American racism and slavery it grew out of, inextricably intertwined with the history of the United States.

The book will be published in Sweden in the fall of 2024.