Members of the Little Rock Nine were on hand in Newport News for the events leading up to the christening Saturday of the USS Arkansas.
The group of Black students made history in 1957 when they desegregated the all-White Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. It wasn’t an honor they were expecting, said Carlotta Walls LaNier.
“I was rather impressed when I got this phone call. And it was funny too to me that someone would call and ask us to be sponsors of a submarine,” she said.
President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division to protect the young students after a federal judge ordered that they be allowed to attend class. In 2018, then-Secretary of the Navy Ray Maybus named the six surviving women as sponsors of the boat, which was built at Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding in Newport News.
“Before going to Central High School, I had never seen violence permitted in a school,” Elizabeth Eckford said.
After high school, Eckford joined the Army. The group, including Gloria Ray Karlmark, toured the Virginia Class submarine for the first time Friday.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen a submarine,” Eckford said. “For a long time, I was wondering what it would be like in such a confined space for long periods of time. I understand that, because of the food supply, it is possible for them to be submerged for three months. And it looks very big, and it is very, very long, but still, there will be about 130 crew there. It’s very impressive.”
USS Arkansas is scheduled to be finished in 2026.
The industry is under tremendous pressure to speed up production of submarines. The Navy has set a goal of producing two submarines a year.
The biggest problem for the shipbuilding industry is still lack of parts and available components, said Jennifer Boykin is president of Newport News Shipbuilding and executive vice president of Huntington Ingalls.
“I think actually one of the bigger issues that we've been working with the Navy and starting to work our way through is sequence critical material, so big, large components, that you can't finish building the ship around,” she said.
Boykin is retiring at the end of the month, making the USS Arkansas the last christening she will oversee.
