School Integration

[-Painted Fan-]

To go along with the other thread about the 50th Anniversary of the Little Rock 9, here is the timeline in chronological order:

1954
May 17- U.S. Supreme Court rules racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional, in Brown vs. Board of Education.
May 18- Arkansas Gov. Francis Cherry says the state will "comply with the requirements" of the Supreme Court ruling.
Aug. 10- Orval Faubus defeats Cherry in the Democratic primary for governor.
Aug. 23- Charleston public schools admit 11 black students, making it the first community in the former Confederacy's 11 states to end school segregation.  The first 2 high school students were Barbara Williams and Joe Ferguson.
Sept. 7- Fayetteville High School enrolls nine black students.
Nov. 2- Faubus wins first term as Arkansas governor.

1955
July 11- Hoxie Schools, in northeast Arkansas, peacefully enroll 25 black students.
July 14- North Little Rock schools adopt a plan to desegregate in fall 1957.
Aug. 20- Mounting white opposition to integration leads to the Hoxie School Board to close its' school.
Oct. 24- Hoxie schools reopen after a federal judge bars segregationists from preventing admission of blacks.

1956
Jan. 23- various Little Rock schools turn away 27 black students when they try to enroll for the spring semester.
Jan. 28- Faubus reports "85 percent of all the people" in Arkansas oppose school desegregation.
Mar. 11- All 8 members of the state's congressional delegation sign the Southern Manifesto, which denounces the Brown decision and pledges to use "all lawful means" to have it reversed.
July 11- At a campaign rally, Faubus says "no school district will be forced to mix the races as long as I am governor".
Nov. 6- Faubus is re-elected with 80 percent of the vote.

1957
Feb. 26- Faubus signs into law four segregation bills passed by the State Legislature.
Apr. 5- Poteau, Ok School Board Pres. Dr. Robert Wayne Lowrey said 27 grade-school pupils will integrate in the fall.
June 25- Fort Smith School Board approves a plan for gradual desegregation, starting with the 1957-58 school year.
July 2- Ozark School Board discloses its desegregation plans for the fall term.
July 20- Attorneys for the Little Rock School Board advise that it must follow federal court decisions on integration rather than state laws.
Aug. 16- Ten black ministers file a lawsuit claiming Arkansas' four new segregation laws are unconstitutional.
Aug. 20- Van Buren schools report it expects 23 black students to enroll.
Sept. 2- Faubus orders National Guard troops to Central High.
Sept. 20- A federal judge orders Faubus not to interfere with integration.
Sept. 23- Through an angry mob, the Little Rock Nine enter Central, though Little Rock police remove them for their safety.
Sept. 24- President Eisenhower federalizes the Arkansas National Guard.
Sept. 25- All nine black students are escorted into central High School.

*sources: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, Arkansas Globecoming, SWTR newspaper.

[mudslog]

I think it is funny that the town of Bryant is in an uproar because the schools need more money and a millage vote is being held Sept. 18th.   

[Guetz]

[tongue-in-cheek]

1957
July 2- Ozark School Board discloses its desecration plans for the fall term.

Exactly what desecrations did the Ozark School Board plan?  How did they work out?  What kind of desecration were they seeking:  religious, political, character, etc?  Is desecration a typical operating function of the Ozark School Board?

[/tongue-in-cheek]


Claps for Painted Fan!  Excellent research and thank you for taking the time to put the chronology on the board!

[Pete Carroll]

To go along with the other thread about the 50th Anniversary of the Little Rock 9, here is the timeline in chronological order:

1954
May 17- U.S. Supreme Court rules racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional, in Brown vs. Board of Education.
May 18- Arkansas Gov. Francis Cherry says the state will "comply with the requirements" of the Supreme Court ruling.
Aug. 10- Orval Faubus defeats Cherry in the Democratic primary for governor.
Aug. 23- Charleston public schools admit 11 black students, making it the first community in the former Confederacy's 11 states to end school segregation.  The first 2 high school students were Barbara Williams and Joe Ferguson.
Sept. 7- Fayetteville High School enrolls nine black students.
Nov. 2- Faubus wins first term as Arkansas governor.

1955
July 11- Hoxie Schools, in northeast Arkansas, peacefully enroll 25 black students.
July 14- North Little Rock schools adopt a plan to desegregate in fall 1957.
Aug. 20- Mounting white opposition to integration leads to the Hoxie School Board to close its' school.
Oct. 24- Hoxie schools reopen after a federal judge bars segregationists from preventing admission of blacks.

1956
Jan. 23- various Little Rock schools turn away 27 black students when they try to enroll for the spring semester.
Jan. 28- Faubus reports "85 percent of all the people" in Arkansas oppose school desegregation.
Mar. 11- All 8 members of the state's congressional delegation sign the Southern Manifesto, which denounces the Brown decision and pledges to use "all lawful means" to have it reversed.
July 11- At a campaign rally, Faubus says "no school district will be forced to mix the races as long as I am governor".
Nov. 6- Faubus is re-elected with 80 percent of the vote.

1957
Feb. 26- Faubus signs into law four segregation bills passed by the State Legislature.
Apr. 5- Poteau, Ok School Board Pres. Dr. Robert Wayne Lowrey said 27 grade-school pupils will integrate in the fall.
June 25- Fort Smith School Board approves a plan for gradual desegregation, starting with the 1957-58 school year.
July 2- Ozark School Board discloses its desegregation plans for the fall term.
July 20- Attorneys for the Little Rock School Board advise that it must follow federal court decisions on integration rather than state laws.
Aug. 16- Ten black ministers file a lawsuit claiming Arkansas' four new segregation laws are unconstitutional.
Aug. 20- Van Buren schools report it expects 23 black students to enroll.
Sept. 2- Faubus orders National Guard troops to Central High.
Sept. 20- A federal judge orders Faubus not to interfere with integration.
Sept. 23- Through an angry mob, the Little Rock Nine enter Central, though Little Rock police remove them for their safety.
Sept. 24- President Eisenhower federalizes the Arkansas National Guard.
Sept. 25- All nine black students are escorted into central High School.

*sources: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, Arkansas Globecoming, SWTR newspaper.

Fayetteville High School is also recognized as being the first school in the state of Arkansas to voluntarily enforce desegregation after the May 17, 1954, Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, overturned the "separate but equal doctrine" of 1896 and declared separate schools for blacks and whites "inherently unequal". While other schools in the south were using various strategies to avoid compliance with the court's ruling, the admission of black students to the previously all-white Fayetteville High School on September 11, 1954, was making news around the country. (Source: Julianne Lewis Adams and Thomas A. DeBlack, Civil Obedience: An Oral History of School Desegregation in Fayetteville, Arkansas, 1954-1965, (Uof A Press, 1994) 1,3.)

[SandLizard04]

Here's an article from the Courier yesterday.

Schools that integrated before Central saw little fanfare

By Annie Bergman
Associated Press writer
CHARLESTON (AP) — On Aug. 23, 1954, 11 black children attended classes at Charleston schools with 480 white students for the first time; and, until nine black students were barred from entering Little Rock Central High School in 1957, the integration was largely peaceful.
"Everything went along just fine in Charleston until the Little Rock Central High crisis," former U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers said. "We did it because we thought it was the right thing to do."
Prior to the integration battle at Central High three Arkansas schools — at Charleston, Fayetteville and Hoxie — desegregated with little fanfare.
Charleston school board members voted to integrate the community's schools July 27, 1954, just two months after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that outlawed segregated schools.
It marked the first integration in the 11 former Confederate states.
Bumpers, who was the Charleston School Board's attorney in 1954, said Woodrow Haynes and Archie Schaffer, the district superintendent and a school board member at the time, deserve credit for pushing the desegregation.
"They made up their minds that the Supreme Court decision meant what it said and that Charleston could save itself a lot of trouble by going ahead and integrating immediately instead of fighting it out and essentially knowing it would be a losing cause," said Bumpers, also a former Arkansas governor.
But continued funding for a one-room Rosenwald School for black students in grades 1-8 also played a role in the decision to integrate, Bumpers said.
Charleston could eliminate the expenses of the one school teacher, plus also save the $4,500 cost of using a bus and bus driver to transport older students to Lincoln High School in Fort Smith.
"Woody Haynes went to ... the Chamber of Commerce, put a story or two in the Charleston paper and found everybody he could that could stand still long enough to listen to him, that we were going to integrate as the court had mandated. And, that not only were we going to integrate but we were going to save ourselves a lot of money," Bumpers said.
Additionally, Bumpers said Haynes had plans to keep the integration quiet to ensure peace.
The superintendent spent the summer months persuading the town's business leaders and reporters at the local newspaper not to discuss the integration plans. Though a few outside reporters came to Charleston to investigate, Haynes refused to speak with them, the senator said.
Nothing was written about Charleston's integration until September 13, 1954, the date when black students were first allowed to attend Fayetteville High School.
However, there were some minor racial problems during the 1954 school year, said Charleston High School librarian Mary Belle Ervin.
Before students arrived on the first day of school, Ervin and Bumpers both recalled that Haynes found a racial slur written in green paint on the brick facade of the school. The superintendent and the janitor were able to clean it off before students arrived.
Ervin, who was working in nearby Fort Smith at the time, said most people in Charleston were open-minded enough to give integration a chance.
"You get to know people and you look past the differences and you find things that are the same," she said.
Barbara Dotson, who with Joe Ferguson, was one of the first two black students to graduate from Charleston in 1961, said there was some racial tension for the first few weeks of school, which made it confusing for some of the black students.
"They really didn't like it, some of the (white) people down there, when it first happened," Dotson said. "But after we got there awhile it got better. It caused a lot of stress on you, basically because there wasn't that many black people in the school."
However, Dotson said her experiences integrating Charleston were nothing compared to what the Little Rock Nine experienced. Dotson said, too, that most students, particularly the girls, were very nice to her.
Another school that integrated before Central, however, endured boycotts by segregationists and a subsequent court battle before integrating.
In 1955, Hoxie in eastern Arkansas had separate schools for black and white children. Black students were housed in a poorly maintained elementary school, while high school-age students were bused to Jonesboro.
As with Charleston, Hoxie, a town of 1,800, voted to integrate because it would save the district money. On July 11, 1955, 25 black students integrated the previously all-white schools, made up of nearly 1,000 white children.
Ethel Tompkins, who was the first black graduate in the Hoxie school district in 1961, said the first few weeks at the integrated Hoxie schools were quiet with no problems.
The peace ended two weeks later when an issue of Life Magazine appeared July 25, which showed that integration was being accomplished in the Southern states, said Tompkins, a reference librarian at the Lawrence County Library in Hoxie.
"The article was showing how integration could be done," said Tompkins, who was 12 when she first started attending classes at the previously all-white school. "I guess when that article was published — that's when the supremacists groups said 'OK, we can't have this."'
Segregationists and members of white supremacist groups began showing up in Hoxie, Tompkins said. They held meetings, and even passed a resolution to boycott the Hoxie schools.
"They used scare tactics telling people that, if you allow the schools to integrate ... later on you're going to have problems," Tompkins said. "And of course people were concerned about their kids, so they would go to the meetings."
The Hoxie School Board later sued the segregationists, including some from the Little Rock chapter of the white supremacist group White America, alleging the integration was effective until they began protest the action.
The school board eventually won a permanent injunction against the segregationists in December 1955.
Tompkins said while she was never threatened, other students and their families were.
"One of the families, they received a notice saying, 'Don't send your kids to school something might happen to them,"' she said. "We didn't, as far as I know from what dad said later, we only received maybe one or two hang up phone calls. One of the other families received pictures of Emmett Till stating that 'this could be your child."'
Emmett Till was 14 years old when he was killed in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. An autopsy found he died of a gunshot wound to the head, and he had broken wrist bones and skull and leg fractures.
Though both Charleston and Hoxie integrated years before Little Rock Central, neither has gained the notoriety of the 1957 crisis. In June, however, Charleston schools was dedicated as a National Commemorative Site.
"We made history without really planning to — or trying to," Bumpers said.