Finding the Lost Year: What Happened When Little Rock Closed Its Public Schools

INTRODUCTION

Copyright © 2009 by The University of Arkansas Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America ISBN-10: 1-55728-900-X ISBN-13: 978-1-55728-900-1 13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1 Text design by Ellen Beeler ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gordy, Sondra Hercher. Finding the lost year : what happened when Little Rock closed its public schools? / Sondra Gordy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55728-900-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. School integration—Arkansas—Little Rock. 2. Public schools—Arkansas— Little Rock. 3. Discrimination in education—Arkansas—Little Rock. 4. African Americans—Education—Arkansas—Little Rock. 5. African American students— Arkansas—Little Rock. 6. Little Rock (Ark.)—Race relations. 7. Central High School (Little Rock, Ark.). I. Title. LC214.23.L56G67 2009 379.2'63097677309045—dc22 2009001522 for Dr. C. Fred Williams mentor and colleague who always believed in this project and for Sandra Hubbard documentary filmmaker and Lost Year classmate who inspired me to tell the unknown stories of the 1958–59 school year CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Before the Lost Year xi Chapter One: The Summer of Relief Turns to Anxiety 1 Chapter Two: Nothing but Confusion 33 Chapter Three: Where Shall We Go? 57 Chapter Four: Whom Shall We Blame? 85 Chapter Five: Enter the Politicians 111 Chapter Six: Why Not Blame the Teachers? 133 Chapter Seven: The Community Rallies— Some Leaders Do Not 153 Afterword 175 Appendix 181 Notes 203 Index 235 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been written without the advice and generous kindness of friends, colleagues, and those who were once strangers. Because the research for this book began over thirteen years ago, citing each individual who helped me along the way is impossible, but to each of you I am grateful. For the many Lost Year participants who granted me interviews, thank you for allowing me to tell your story. For all those at the University of Arkansas Special Collections, the University of Central Arkansas Archives, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Archives, I am appreciative of your responses to my many requests for help. A number of institutions provided funding for the research for this book, as well as the research and production of the sixty-minute documentary entitled The Lost Year: the Arkansas Council for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fred Darragh Foundation, and the President’s Fund at the University of Central Arkansas. Funding for the Web site www.thelostyear.com came from the Bridge Fund at the Arkansas Community Foundation. To all those at the University of Arkansas Press, I am grateful for your patience and fine work. INTRODUCTION Before the Lost Year None of that happened to you. Why offer memories you do not have? Remembering can be painful, even frightening. But it can also swell your heart and open your mind. —Toni Morrison, Remember: The Journey to School Integration September 1957 lives in the minds of many Americans as a time of disgrace for citizens and high school students in Little Rock, Arkansas. Many writers and historians have documented the initial story of the Little Rock Central High desegregation crisis. Images of shouting segregationists and tales of miscreant classmates play out in the black and white images of the day: Governor Orval Faubus calls out the Arkansas National Guard to block the entry of nine black high school students into a white student population of almost two thousand, as American viewers and audiences worldwide watch through the new medium of television. Within three weeks, U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower sends the 101st Airborne Division to trump Faubus’s authority with that of the federal government, while preserving order and giving protected entry to the Little Rock Nine.1 Important as the story of September 1957 and the following months is in the history of both civil rights and public education, the complicated period that followed actually reveals more about the nature of a community in crisis. An extensive and ongoing literature regarding Little Rock’s reaction to the Brown I and Brown II decisions makes the 1957–58 Little Rock desegregation crisis the...