Remember Little Rock by Erin Krutko Devlin (review)

Erin Krutko Devlin's Remember Little Rock is a well-researched, well-argued, and incredibly well-written book that offers a wide-range of insights to everyone from undergraduates with only a cursory understanding of the heroic efforts of the Little Rock Nine to historians studying the public memory of the civil rights movement.

Devlin begins with a historical narrative of the school desegregation efforts in Little Rock, Arkansas from 1957–59. The book's second chapter charts the "birth" of the political project to reframe Little Rock's history of desegregation in a colorblind manner in order to oppose the 1970s episode of the school segregation crisis—busing. As white Little Rock residents raged against the "forced busing" of their community, many turned to the events in Little Rock two decades prior as evidence that "passive progress" was a far more preferable solution to busing. This political maneuver—whereby white civil rights opponents co-opted the heroic efforts of the Little Rock Nine to undermine the cause of racial justice—would become the distinguishing feature of the public memory of the Little Rock Nine and the narrative whites continually inserted as the lesson of the history of their activism.

In chapter 3, Devlin reveals that by the 1980s, city leaders who opposed the integration of Little Rock's schools three decades prior sought to reframe their opposition as based on a moderation that prioritized gradual change in the alleged interest of all parties involved and not on a commitment to white supremacy and segregation. Moreover, by the 1980s, there was a considerable market for such narratives in print and on television. Memoirs and documentaries recounting the crisis that elevated the white "moderates" of Little Rock above their more recalcitrant racial brethren elsewhere in the South proved quite popular among white audiences. Devlin's ability to both challenge claims of moderation among white leaders of Arkansas while also showing how they rebranded and sold themselves as such is particularly strong, clear, and convincing.

As chapter 4 demonstrates, city and state officials, including Governor Mike Huckabee, used the fortieth anniversary commemoration of the integration of Central High School as a victory lap for the supposed elimination of structural racism from the state and the country. Even President Bill Clinton, while not going as far as Huckabee, used the occasion to partially blame the "low expectations" of poor black communities for the continued inequities such communities faced. On the other hand, Ernest Green, the first black graduate from Central High School, used his address at the fortieth anniversary celebration to challenge both the governor and the president's framing of his and his colleagues' legacy. For Green, the anniversary marked an opportunity to recruit the next generation of social activists to continue the long unfinished struggle for racial justice. "Power concedes nothing without a struggle," Green noted (145).

The book's final chapter details the ongoing efforts of many of the activists Green referenced. Devlin details the multitude of ways in which the Little Rock Nine have continued to speak, write, and teach about their struggle in a manner that connects their history to contemporary issues of injustice, school segregation, and inequality. These efforts, along with those of other groups and activists that continue to fight for black students in Little Rock, comprise an alternative memory of the Little Rock Nine, one that eschews the colorblind tropes of the movement's public memory and avoids saccharine narratives of racial progress pushed by white leaders in order to reinforce racial inequality in the city.

If there is something to critique in this very strong book, it is its inability, at times, to pull the lens back and situate the struggles over the construction of public memory in Little Rock within the larger socio-political battles of the post-civil rights era. Reimagining the civil rights movement as colorblind in order to undermine racial justice efforts in the decades after the 1960s is a hallmark of...