Vanity Fair has a fascinating look into the relationship between Elizabeth Eckerd and Hazel Bryan. David Margolick has done a wonderful job of reporting the fractured and strange braid of their relationship over the years, and how different real outcomes are from Hollywood outcomes. If you’re following the story of the Jena 6, there are lessons to be learned. Like how one picture can shape perceptions of who you are forever. Like how one news event changes nothing. Like how racism is unrepentant and fierce and runs so deep that when the cameras turn away and the reporters go to the next big story, nothing changes.

The hardest part of this story for me was reading about Elizabeth’s life in high school after the furor died down and she went about her daily life in 1957. Read that, and then go read some other stories of students being bullied in this current age. Some of those bullied students (white students, at that), took out their guns and shot up their schools for far less than Elizabeth endured. Some of those bullied students sue. Some of them kill themselves. Some of them just live with it, beaten down and discouraged, never recovering as adults.

Yet the hate marches on. Events in Jena prove that. The comments on Vanessa’s blog prove it. I can see it, but I have no idea how to change it. Do you?