Fighting For A Place At Home and Abroad

Effie Jones Bowers-Hatten is a warrior for civil rights, America, and the voiceless. Her willingness to stand in the face of adversity began when she was a teenager. She was the first African-American to attend Little Rock’s Hall High School.

“I talked to my mother about it. I didn’t realize all of the things we would go through to integrate. My mother asked me if that was what I wanted to do,” Ms. Bowers-Hatten recalls

In the late 1950’s Little Rock became the testing place for school integration, and the times were tense. The Little Rock Nine were known all around the country and so was Daisy Bates, the petite president of the local NAACP who spoke for the students in Arkansas and elsewhere.

“She was such a strong woman. She opened her home to us, and it was like a hiding place for us. Daisy Bates was my mentor and my friend.” Ms. Bowers-Hatten says.

The first time Effie Jones set foot inside Hall High School she was a 17 year-old senior.  “You know we were scared.  We could see the police around the school, but no one was outside. We didn’t know they were clustered inside in the hall. We tried to maintain our cool.”

On that day she made a friend. “It’s like her face was Christ’s face, smiling at me. Edith Hay befriended me.”

Those days bring conflicting emotions for the now 71 year-old. She remembers the day she walked home from school and met 20 year-old Cololsees Bowers who drove a green and white Oldsmobile. After she graduated from Hall, they married.

Bowers-Hatten went to college at AM&N in Pine Bluff where she studied nursing. She worked at Jean’s Nursing Home in College Station. Medical facilities were also integrating and Bowers-Hatten joined the nursing staff at St. Vincent’s Hospital where she worked for several years.

It was Bowers-Hatten’s nursing work that landed her in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm. While working for the Veteran’s Administration’s nursing home, she joined the Army Reserves. In 1990 her unit received orders to serve in the Middle East. She was in her 40’s, her husband had died, and the woman who had stood her ground as a teenager stood firm for her country.

“I was so scared. We arrived in the dark, and we had all of our gear. We must have walked five miles, “ Bowers-Hatten said. “I took care of my patients. They were calling me ‘mother.’  When our guys would go off, I would pray for them. And, until I would see them ride in and get out of that truck, I felt responsible for them.”

Returning to Little Rock was an enormous relief for the mother of two. She retired from the military after almost 20 years. Now, the gregarious trailblazer works to raise awareness about the plight of men and women who are incarcerated. Her trademark courage is being applied to CURE (www.curenational.org), the prisoner advocacy organization.

“I came home from the war, looking for our men. I’m asking God to give me strength,” she said as tears filled her eyes, the same eyes that have witnessed decades of fighting on the home front and abroad.