Little Rock and the History of the Civil Rights Movement

28 Historically Speaking September/October 2007 Little Rock at 50: a roundtable THE 50THANNIlTiRSARY OF THE UTTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS, school desegregation crisis is a reminder of the complicated nature of social change in the 20th century. AfterArkansas Governor Orval Faubus blocked nine black studentsfrom entering Little Rock's CentralHigh Schoolin September, President'Dwight Eisenhower ordered in the 101stAirborne toprotect the students. On September 25, 1957, the Little Rock Nine became thefirst black students to enroll at the school. The matterwas hardly settled, though. OneyearlaterFaubus issuedapublicstatement: "Acting under thepowers and responsibilities imposed upon me by these laws, I have ordered closed the senior high schools of Little Rock. " Historically Speaking has askedthree scholars of the civilrights movementto reflect on the legacy of Little Rock. John Kirk assesses historical literature, while Sara Bullard and Richard King shed light on the contemporary relevance of the crisis. Little Rock and the History of the Civil Rights Movement John A. Kirk Histories of the civil rights movement have changed dramatically since the 1970s, when they were virtually synonymous with biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. A shift in focus from national to local, state, and regional levels has provided an understanding of the extent and range of black grassroots activism in the South and, more recendy, in other regions of the United States as well. This has expanded the chronology of the movement beyond King's leadership as historians have charted the impact of the New Deal, the Second World War, and the Cold War on those local struggles . The emphasis is now beginning to switch from the movement's origins to its legacies, in what historian Jacquelyn Hall describes as the "long civil rights movement." As well as changing our knowledge of the chronology of the movement, this scholarship has vasdy expanded its purview to encompass a much broader range of themes and topics. Since it would be impossible to do full justice to the complexities and nuances of movement literature in such a short space, one key episode—the 1 957 Litde Rock crisis—illuminates how such writings have shaped civil rights history and how they may continue to do so in die future. On September 2, 1957, Governor Orval E. Faubus drew national and international attention to Little Rock, Arkansas, when he called out the state's National Guard to prevent the implementation of a court-ordered desegregation plan at Central High School. In defying die local courts and, ultimately, die U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision, Faubus direcdy challenged the authority of the federal government John T. Bledsoe's photograph of Governor Orval Faubus speaking at a rally protesting the admission of the Little Rock Nine to Central High School, August 20, 1959. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-U9-2919-25]. as no other elected southern politician had since the Civil War. Over the following weeks negotiations took place between the White House and die governor 's mansion that finally led to the wididrawal of state troops. However, when nine black students attempted to attend classes on September 23, an unruly white mob caused so much disruption that school officials withdrew them from Central High for their own safety. The scenes of violence finally prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to send federal troops to Litde Rock to secure the students' safe passage into die school. On September 25, the nine finally completed their first day of classes under armed guard. Early accounts presented Governor Faubus as a racist demagogue. Later analyses, notably journalist Roy Reed's biography, gave a more rounded portrait of a man who was the son of a socialist and, in his early career, a political liberal on most issues. As with other southern politicians, Fabus based his decisions on pragmatic concerns about winning elections rather than any deep-seated desire to defend white supremacy. The chief architect of public school policy was the city's superintendent of schools, Vigil T. Blossom. In 1955 Blossom drew up one of the earliest plans for compliance with Brown that provided for some, albeit very closely guarded and controlled integration in city schools. Some have claimed that in...