Hazel had helped coax Elizabeth out of her shell, but she was also a crutch. Without her around, Elizabeth's renewal intensified. Her appearances before students grew more frequent, though they were never easy: she would not eat or drink beforehand, and would make sure a lined wastebasket and paper towels were on hand just in case she threw up. She would read off cue cards, her hands shaking. She would not wear her glasses, so she could not make out any disapproving faces. She would speak fast, the better to exit quickly. And never would she allow pictures; after all, she was ugly.

I witnessed those difficulties firsthand a few years back, when Elizabeth spoke to a student group at a Golden Corral restaurant outside Little Rock. She'd been received reverentially, the boys and girls lining up beforehand to take her picture and have her sign their books. Half an hour into her talk, though, something in her snapped, and she bolted for the door. "I do apologize, but she is having an episode," a group leader told the dumbfounded group. With me, too, she'd balk. After one marathon phone call I found a message on my answering machine. "I want to discontinue those long interviews, because those calls cause some backwash in my life that's hard to deal with," she said. "I'm having trouble sleeping at all." But she persevered, and I, too, could see the change.

Over time, Elizabeth refined her message, and her delivery. She always spoke precisely and clearly, but now it is without notes. She sprinkles in humor. She goes over her personal story quickly and self-deprecatingly. "A 65-year-old footnote to the past," she calls herself, someone who didn't graduate magna or summa cum laude, but "thank you, lawdy." Then she gets to her real, and vaguely subversive, message: It doesn't matter whether your teacher likes you or not; study for yourselves. Even a shy person can develop steel. And if you reach out to someone being harassed, you can save his life.

She has experienced additional setbacks. On New Year's Day in 2003, 26-year-old Erin Eckford, who suffered from a host of psychological problems, walked out of his mother's house and started firing a semi-automatic rifle into the air. When he refused to put it down, the Little Rock police killed him. Community activists pressed Elizabeth to sue, or at least raise a ruckus, but she refused; "suicide by cop," she called what had occurred. Friends feared it might tip Elizabeth back over the edge. Instead, she seemed only to draw strength from it. (Hazel and her husband sent her a condolence card, without a note.) She says little about her surviving son, now in the Coast Guard. "I don't consider myself an extremely strong person, but both my kids are much weaker than I am," she says.

But there were triumphs, too. In August 2005, individual statues of the Nine, with Elizabeth, her binder held close to her chest, leading the way, were dedicated on the grounds of the state capitol. The sculptor, John Deering, said he had no trouble depicting Elizabeth: Will Counts's photo said it all. Elizabeth thinks it's a good likeness, but wonders about memorializing the living. "We still have time to mess up," she jokes.

In the First Division of Pulaski County Circuit Court, Elizabeth's clients are mostly black, often semi-illiterate, pinched for hot checks or credit-card fraud or taking or selling drugs. Many couldn't afford lawyers; few are hardened criminals. She spends her days hearing the same stock sob stories and, frustrated writer that she is, inventing her own, matching a new face with whatever she can conjure up. She keeps peanuts around for prisoners who have to skip breakfast to come in, but she's no soft touch. "Aren't you ashamed of showing your underwear?" she might ask some unkempt man. "How are you going to get a decent job looking like that?" she'll ask someone with glittering gold grills on his teeth. Some clients prefer to wait for her colleague Curtis Ricks: he's easier on them. Once in a while, after something's been on television, someone will say, "Miss Eckerd, I didn't know that was you." Treat her the way they always have, she tells them.