NLR Desegregation

ATTEMPT TO INTEGRATE
Six Black teenagers, escorted by four AME ministers, tried to desegregate predominantly white North Little Rock High School on September 9, 1957. They
were shoved back near the front door and denied entrance by about a dozen adults and former students.

Newspaper accounts described a mob of people yelling racial insults. No one was injured or arrested, although the police detained two young white men long
enough for them to “cool off.”

Under a limited desegregation plan adopted in July 1955, prompted by the 1954 and 1955 Brown v. Board of Education decisions striking down segregated public schools, the North Little Rock School Board had voted to admit Black 12th graders for the first time to North Little Rock High School in 1957.

On September 2, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus dispatched the National Guard to keep “the peace and good order” at Little Rock’s Central High
School. An anxious North Little Rock School Board met in special session on September 3 and postponed desegregation “indefinitely” because of the
governor’s action.

“We don’t want the National Guard camped out on our doorstep,” one school board member remarked to an Arkansas Gazette reporter.

The next day, under orders from Faubus, Guardsmen blocked desegregation at Central.

THE NORTH LITTLE ROCK 6
Richard Lindsey, Gerald Persons, Harold Gene Smith, William Henderson, Eugene Hall, and Frank Henderson, along with a seventh Black student, had registered to attend North Little Rock High School in 1957. Six of them met with advisors and resolved to attempt entry anyway, despite the board’s delay.

“Our folks were with us 100 percent,” said J.D. Webster, an AME minister who was joined on September 9 by ministers F.D. Gipson, W.B. Banks and J.H. Gipson. Webster told the Gazette the decision was “ours alone” and that the NAACP “gave absolutely no instructions to us or the students.”

Webster blamed the presence of troops at Central for encouraging resistance to the integration of North Little Rock High School. F.D. Gipson said the six felt good about their effort, the Gazette reported.

“Their fear is not great now,” he said.

The New York Times on September 10 featured a front-page photograph of the confrontation near the high school entrance. In the photo, taken by Glen Moon of the Arkansas Democrat, one of the white youths, with a cigarette planted in his mouth, was poised to push back Harold Gene Smith and Gerald Persons.

F.B. Wright, superintendent of North Little Rock public schools, advised the Black students later that day to return to S.A. Jones Senior High, the city’s historically black high school. Although rumors swirled about another attempt, all six enrolled at Jones and graduated the next spring.

Three of the six who braved the hostile crowd are deceased today. As of 2023, Smith and Persons lived out of state and Lindsey of the Lindsey Barbecue family
lived in North Little Rock. During a 50-year reunion in 2007, the three symbolically ascended the steps of North Little Rock High School and walked through the front door.

DESEGREGATION BEGINS
No attempt was made again to desegregate North Little Rock schools until August 1963 when five Black students applied for admission to white secondary schools. Not under court order at the time, the School Board nevertheless endured pressure from Black patrons, the federal government and, specifically, the Little Rock Air Force Base.

The board rejected the applications, but announced that desegregation would begin in fall 1964. Without incident, eight Black first- and second-graders desegregated Clendenin and Riverside elementary schools on September 3, 1964.

In 1965, the School Board adopted a “freedom of choice” plan to desegregate all grades within three years. Protests from black patrons, however, led the U.S.
Office of Education to force the School Board to integrate all grades by fall 1966. On September 6, 1966, 20 black students desegregated North Little Rock High School.

In 1968, the U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare gave the North Little Rock School District a deadline to “remove all vestiges of a dual school
system.” Still, HEW approved a plan on July 31, 1968, that retained racially identifiable schools.

LAWSUIT LEADS TO BUSING
In August 1968, civil rights lawyer John W. Walker, on behalf of Black parents, sued the North Little Rock School District in federal court seeking immediate and full integration of all of the city’s public schools.

The district submitted a neighborhood school plan in 1969 that U.S. District Judge J. Smith Henley allowed for one year only. In 1970, Henley ordered the
elimination of racially identifiable secondary schools. As a result, the School Board closed S.A. Jones Senior and Junior High School and transferred those students to previously white schools.

U.S. Supreme Court decisions in cases out of Virginia and Mississippi had ended freedom-of-choice plans and imposed the use of quotas to achieve desegregation. In another case out of North Carolina, the Supreme Court approved busing as a means to end dual public school systems.

Judge Henley imposed busing in 1971 to fully desegregate the North Little Rock School District’s schools. Despite local opposition to busing, the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis affirmed Henley’s order.

Known as the Storm Plan, proposed by School Board member Fred C. Storm, the busing of 2,230 students – 1,145 whites and 1,085 Blacks – began in September 1972. Under the plan, white schools were paired with Black schools.

The former Jones Junior High had reopened in 1971 as a district-wide seventhgrade school. Two high schools, known as Ole Main (formerly North Little Rock
High School) and Northeast (opened in 1969) were desegregated, as well as junior high schools.

In 1972, John W. Smith, North Little Rock’s first Black School Board member, elected in 1968, lost a bid for re-election to an anti-busing opponent.

As a result of judicial affirmation of full and immediate desegregation, enforced by busing, white enrollment in North Little Rock public schools began a decadeslong decline. “White flight” led to a rise in the number of private schools and migration out of North Little Rock to other public school districts.

LITIGATION GOES ON
Frustration set in among administrators and the School Board as the district tried to extract itself from litigation during the 1970s and early 1980s. The district
sought court approval for unitary status, signifying the end of a dual school system.

In 1977, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Shell denied the district’s motion to dismiss the case and ordered additional busing of Black students in Dixie Addition,
who had no school-funded transportation to Northeast and Lakewood.

Shell also permitted Lorene Joshua of Dark Hollow and other parents of Black students represented by John Walker to intervene in the case.

Two years later, after Shell’s death, U.S. District Court Judge Elsijane Trimble Roy turned down the district’s request for reconsideration and the Eighth Circuit
agreed.

“More remains to be accomplished before it can be said the North Little Rock School District is fully integrated,” the appeals court wrote in 1980.
The school district appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case in 1982.

“I felt we are a totally desegregated district,” Robert Lyon, School Board president, commented to the press. “I don’t know what more we could do.”

CONSOLIDATION CASE
Litigation took another turn in December 1982 when the Little Rock School District sued to force consolidation with the North Little Rock and Pulaski County
districts into one county-wide school district. The state of Arkansas was also a defendant in the case. The court again allowed Joshua and other Black parents
represented by Walker to intervene.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Woods ordered consolidation in 1984, but the Eighth Circuit voided it the next year. By 1989 the parties hammered out a
settlement that obligated the state to pay $129.5 million over a decade as a remedy for its antagonism to integration going back to 1957.

Under the terms, North Little Rock received $2.7 million over seven years to meet desegregation goals.

Notwithstanding the settlement, North Little Rock and other districts were by no means out of court. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright, who replaced Woods on the case, set up an office to monitor compliance.

COURT OVERSIGHT
Court supervision of the North Little Rock School District continued in nine areas of its desegregation plan. This included, among other things, the district’s
commitment, tied to the payment of settlement funds, to reduce an overrepresentation of Black students in special education.

In 1995, Judge Wright released North Little Rock from court oversight of student assignments to schools. The school district curtailed busing, but Superintendent James Smith proceeded with caution and implemented a modified busing plan in 1996.

By then the district had a majority of Black students overall, due to the loss of white students to other districts, private schools, and home-school education.

UNITARY STATUS
In 2012, the courts ruled that the North Little Rock School District had achieved unitary status and was fully desegregated.

Still facing declining enrollment, however, the district initiated enhanced programs to attract students, whose choices expanded in 2013 with state approval of non-traditional open enrollment public charter schools and in 2023 with approval of private school vouchers.

–Cary Bradburn

1874: Arkansas Constitution mandated free public education for all from ages 5- 21, but local schools allowed to segregate students.

1878: Argenta Public Schools were segregated.

1896: U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine.

1948: Silas Hunt was first black student enrolled in the University of Arkansas School of Law at Fayetteville, but was segregated in a basement classroom.

1951: Jackie L. Shropshire was the first black graduate of UA Law School.

1954: U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, unanimously declared segregated public schools unconstitutional under the 14th
Amendment.

1954: In Arkansas, the Fayetteville and Charleston schools desegregated to ease segregation’s financial burden.

1955: Known as the Brown II decision, the U.S. Supreme required states to begin desegregation plans “with all deliberate speed.”

1955: Hoxie schools in east Arkansas desegregated.

1955: North Little Rock and Little Rock school boards made plans to begin gradual desegregation in 1957.

Sept. 2, 1957: Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus dispatched the National Guard to keep the peace at Little Rock’s Central High School.

Sept. 3, 1957: North Little Rock School Board in special meeting postponed desegregation “indefinitely” because of the governor’s action.

Sept. 4, 1957: The Guard barred nine black students from attending Central.

Sept. 9, 1957: A mob blocked six black students from entering North Little Rock High School.

Sept. 20, 1957: Faubus removed the Guard from Central, after a federal judge determined the governor’s intent was to stop integration.

Sept. 23, 1957: An anti-desegregation crowd of about 1,000 gathered at Central and became agitated after learning that the nine black students had entered the school through a side door.

Sept. 24, 1957: U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower mobilized 1,000 members of the Army’s 101st Airborne and federalized the Guard.

Sept. 25, 1957: Escorted by Army troops, the nine black students desegregated Central.

1963: North Little Rock School Board rejected applications from five black students for admission to white-only secondary schools, but announced that desegregation would begin the next year.

Sept. 3, 1964: Without incident, eight black first- and second-graders desegregated Clendenin and Riverside elementary schools.

1965: North Little Rock adopted a “freedom of choice” plan and desegregated schools up through the seventh grade.

Sept. 6, 1966: 25 black students desegregated North Little Rock High School.

1967: Five black students graduated from the high school.

March 12, 1968: John W. Smith was first black man elected to North Little Rock School Board.

May 27, 1968: U.S. Supreme Court, In Green v. New Kent County School Board (Virginia), struck down “freedom of choice” plans as ineffective in achieving
desegregation.

Aug. 5, 1968: Civil rights attorney John W. Walker, on behalf of a black parent and his six children, sued the North Little Rock School District in federal court, seeking immediate and full integration of all of the city’s public schools.

1970: After U.S. District Judge J. Smith Henley ordered the North Little Rock School District to eliminate racially identifiable schools, the School Board closed
historically black S.A. Jones Senior and Junior High Schools and transferred students to other schools.

April 20, 1971: U.S Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board (North Carolina), approved racial quotas and busing to implement full
desegregation.

May 13, 1971: North Little Rock School Board voted to reopen former S.A. Jones school as a district-wide seventh-grade school, Central Junior High, and to change the names of schools with “racial connotations.”

June 25, 1971: U.S. District Judge Henley accepted North Little Rock School District’s plan to implement busing to fully desegregate.

Sept. 7, 1971: Edgewood Academy, organized by school busing foes, opened with 55 students in grades 1-8 in Sylvan Hills and moved in November to 900 Mission Road in North Little Rock.

Sept. 13, 1971: U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Mo., affirmed Henley’s busing order.

1972: John W. Smith, first black man on North Little Rock School Board, defeated for re-election by anti-busing candidate.

1972: Full-scale busing began in the North Little Rock School District.

1977: U.S. District Court Judge Terry Shell ordered additional busing of black students from Dixie Addition, who had no school-funded transportation to
Northeast and Lakewood schools.

1977: Shell permitted Lorene Joshua of Dark Hollow and other parents of black students represented by John Walker to intervene in the case.

1979: U.S. District Judge Elsijane Trimble Roy denied North Little Rock’s bid for reconsideration to dismiss the case on grounds it had fully desegregated.

1980: U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Roy’s order.

1982: U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear North Little Rock’s case.

1982: Little Rock School District sued North Little Rock and Pulaski County school districts, asking for consolidation into one county-wide district.

1982: U.S. District Judge Henry Woods allowed Joshua and other black parents represented by Walker to intervene.

1984: Woods ordered consolidation of the three Pulaski County school districts.

1985: U.S. Justice Department intervened in school consolidation case, contending there was “no basis” for Woods’ order.

1985: U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Woods’ consolidation order.

1989: Parties in the consolidation case, including the state of Arkansas, reached a settlement that obligated the state to annual payments to the school districts as
remedy for its antagonism to desegregation going back to 1957.

1991: U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals created the Office of Desegregation Monitoring to oversee compliance by the school districts in Pulaski County.

1995: U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright released the North Little Rock School District from federal oversight of student school assignments

1996: North Little Rock scaled back busing.

2012: U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. declared unitary status, indicating that the North Little Rock School District had fully desegregated, and released the district from court oversight.

2013: tentative agreement to settle the desegregation case.

2014: Judge Marshall closed the Office of Desegregation Monitoring.

2014: The North Little Rock School District’s desegregation case ended