Desegregation of the Pulaski County Special School District

The desegregation of the Pulaski County Special School District (PCSSD) took place gradually, starting with schools associated with a military base in Pulaski County in the late 1950s and then other schools by the mid-1960s, followed by a number of court cases related to desegregation and resegregation in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2026, the district was finally declared to be no longer segregated and released from court monitoring.

The Pulaski County Special School District was created in 1927 when thirty-eight school districts in Pulaski County—excluding Little Rock (Pulaski County) and North Little Rock (Pulaski County)—were consolidated to form a single school system. During ensuing decades, some areas of neighboring counties were incorporated into the PCSSD. As was mandated by various school laws dating back to 1868, the PCSSD operated a racially segregated (i.e., dual) system.

Like other districts, the PCSSD was confronted with the issue of desegregation after the May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. On August 24, 1954, African American attorney Wiley Branton presented two petitions from the historically Black communities of Sweet Home (Pulaski County) and College Station (Pulaski County) to the PCSSD board calling for the abolition of segregation. At a subsequent meeting on September 7, Branton, accompanied by local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attorneys Jackie Shropshire and Thaddeus Williams, and a group of patrons again asked for desegregation. The school board demurred.

Using the Supreme Court’s Brown II order of May 31, 1955, as a basis, Williams, state NAACP president Daisy Bates, and several patrons met with the PCSSD board again on August 9, 1955. The board and superintendent gave several reasons for not commencing integration that year; neither was the district developing a desegregation plan for any future year. This was the last action toward integration taken in the district for several years.

The desegregation of Central High School in 1957 did not impact the PCSSD. However, the 1958 “Lost Year” did have a limited effect. When Little Rock closed all four of its high schools before the 1958–59 school year, the PCSSD reluctantly began accepting displaced students. By the end of 1958, the PCSSD had accepted about 570 white and 220 Black Little Rock students.

The PCSSD established the Air Base Elementary School in September 1958 to accommodate children of personnel stationed at the recently opened Little Rock Air Force Base at Jacksonville (Pulaski County). Enrollment in this school was restricted to white students of base personnel who lived on base. White students of base personnel living off base had to attend other schools. All Black students of base personnel, regardless of whether they lived on or off the base, had to attend the Pulaski County Training School (grades 1–12) located in the McAlmont (Pulaski County) area. Disregarding this enrollment restriction, Sergeant James R. Dallas and his wife Alender Dallas attempted to enroll their second-grade daughter in the Air Base school before the 1958–59 term began. During a meeting with the superintendent, Mrs. Dallas was informed that her daughter would be denied admission. Finding this unacceptable, the couple sent a telegram to the Department of Defense and President Dwight D. Eisenhower appealing to them to stop this discriminatory practice. Consequently, in early October 1958 the Assistant Secretary of Defense came to Little Rock and met with the superintendent and school board. The secretary advised the school officials that the military might forcibly annex the school if necessary to see to its integration. The school board held firm, however, and voted to not change its segregation policy or to transfer the school to the Defense Department. The Defense Department, considering the volatile situation in Little Rock, thought it prudent not to press for the school’s integration.

When the Little Rock school situation was resolved in 1959, the Defense Department took a firmer stance on the Air Base school’s integration. It warned the district that its federal funding might be terminated if it did not open the school to Black children of base personnel. Just as the 1959–60 term began, an agreement was finalized in which the elementary school was leased to the air force but would be operated by the school district. Thus, any child who lived on the base, regardless of race, would be permitted to attend the Air Base school. The ten Black students who enrolled in 1959 marked the PCSSD’s first official integration.

Further integration for children of military personnel came in August 1962 when the board voted to allow Black military dependents who lived on the Air Base to attend any secondary school. Black dependents who lived off the Air Base were still required to attend one of the district’s Black elementary or secondary schools. This policy was abolished in August 1963 when the school board voted to admit military dependents to any school regardless whether they lived on or off the base. However, district pupils who were not military dependents still had to attend the schools designated for their race.

A curious episode occurred as a result of the 1963 policy change. When the 1963–64 school year commenced, Y’Vonne Fitts, a white woman whose husband was in the air force but who had recently been transferred out of state, enrolled her second-grade son in the Black Pulaski County Training School. This appears to have been the first instance of reverse integration in Arkansas. The boy did not finish the school year, as he was withdrawn in January 1964 when the family relocated.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act was the impetus for the first integration in the PCSSD that was not connected to the military. Part of this act stated that any entity that received federal funding would be ineligible for such funding if it practiced racial discrimination. The school board did not adopt a formal desegregation plan as a result of the Civil Rights Act, but merely allowed Black students to enter white schools. As a result of this informal policy, after the start of the 1964–65 term, fifty-three Black students were enrolled in white schools, twenty of whom were not military dependents—the first integration in the school district that was not associated with the base.

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), which was responsible for enforcing the Civil Rights Act in the education field wanted the district to devise an actual desegregation plan. In June 1965, the board adopted a freedom of choice plan to go into effect for the 1965–66 year. HEW approved this plan, which resulted in 940 Black students, twenty-one percent of the Black enrollment, electing to attend white schools. Nineteen of the district’s white schools enrolled Black pupils for the first time.

The year 1966 saw the first limited teacher integration when seventeen Black teachers were reassigned to integrated classes at ten predominantly white elementary schools. Also in 1967, enrollment in the PCSSD reached 25,675, surpassing Little Rock as the largest district in Arkansas. (The PCSSD held this position until 1987.)

In January 1968, HEW advised the district that its freedom of choice plan was not achieving satisfactory progress, thus placing the district’s federal funding in jeopardy. A HEW team conducted a compliance review of the district. After some back and forth, HEW approved a new desegregation plan in July 1968 that permitted the continuation of freedom of choice but introduced limited zoning and pairing of certain schools.

By this time, many Black patrons had grown dissatisfied with the freedom of choice plan. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s May 1968 Green v. County School Board of Kent County ruling, on August 7 a lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Little Rock by John W. Walker on behalf of eighty-six Black PCSSD students. This suit was known as the Zinnamon case after its first named plaintiff. The suit essentially demanded that the district discontinue using its freedom of choice plan and implement a more effective plan for fuller integration of both students and staff.

A hearing on the lawsuit scheduled for April 1969 was postponed when the school board took measures that seemed to the plaintiffs would advance integration. In pre-hearing discussions, the district stated that it would continue using freedom of choice but agreed to close and combine certain schools, which would improve the racial composition of several schools.

Still concerned with the PCSSD’s integration progress, HEW conducted a second compliance review in September 1969. The HEW review team presented a plan to the board in November that proposed to end freedom of choice completely. Rather, attendance zones would be established for all schools, certain elementary schools would be paired, and some busing would be used to transfer students to improve racial distribution. From January to July 1970, the district submitted several proposed alternate attendance zone plans, but HEW rejected all of them. During this period, some anti-busing groups were formed, and three neighborhoods filed lawsuits intended to stop the use of pairing and busing. John W. Walker was not pleased with the board’s alternative plans either, as he reactivated the suspended Zinnamon suit.

A hearing was held in federal court on August 11–12, 1970. Since ninety-eight percent of the district’s Black students were attending integrated schools by this date, the main issues addressed were the racial composition of certain schools, attendance zone boundaries, and the use of busing for integration. Judge J. Smith Henley issued his ruling on August 17, allowing the elementary part of the zoning plan to stand, even though some schools would remain racially identifiable. The school district was ordered to submit a new zoning plan for the secondary level. Walker appealed to the Eighth Circuit over the elementary part of the ruling. Walker withdrew the appeal in March 1971 to await the circuit court’s decision in the Little Rock and North Little Rock school cases, which were also on appeal. The Eighth Circuit, however, delayed ruling on the latter two cases until the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the pending Swann case.

Following the April 1971 Court ruling in the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education case, Walker filed a motion calling for the PCSSD to implement a new desegregation plan. Judge Henley ordered that a new plan be submitted, and a hearing on the plan was held on July 15, 1971. The primary issues were the same as those in the 1970 hearing. Henley, noting how dispersed the district’s schools were, again gave tentative approval to the elementary aspect of the recent zoning plan. He did not order any changes to secondary schools nor to staff and teacher assignments. Walker filed another appeal with the Eighth Circuit but, again, did not pursue it. This appeal was dismissed in January 1972. (It seems that Walker was focusing his attention on the Little Rock and North Little Rock school cases at this time.)

As a result of several meetings between the attorneys, a consent decree was approved by Judge Henley in June 1973. The important parts of this decree were that the enrollment in most of the district’s schools would be adjusted so as to be from ten to twenty-five percent Black and that African Americans would be placed in principal positions at all levels. “Neutral” sites would be selected for any new school construction.

After 1973, desegregation remained a largely dormant issue in the PCSSD for several years. This changed in November 1982 when the Little Rock School District (LRSD) filed suit in federal court against the PCSSD, North Little Rock School District (NLRSD), and the state. The LRSD in this action sought to rectify its resegregation concerns by having all of the districts of Pulaski County merged into a single school district. In April 1984, U.S. District Judge Henry Woods issued his ruling, in which he chided the PCSSD for not fully carrying out the mandates of the 1973 consent decree. Woods ordered the consolidation of the three districts. On appeal, in November 1985, the Eighth Circuit Court directed that the three school systems remain independent. However, the boundaries of the LRSD were to be expanded so as to coincide with the city limits of Little Rock, which meant that the PCSSD would lose significant territory to the LRSD. When the territory adjustment went into effect in 1987, the PCSSD transferred fourteen schools and about 8,000 students to LRSD. But this did not bring an end to desegregation matters, as several other connected issues were litigated through the 1980s and 1990s, including magnet schools, remedial education programs, student transfers, teacher assignments, and school building projects.

In late 1999, the PCSSD adopted a plan to further address integration in the district, called “Plan 2000.” This plan listed twelve areas that the PCSSD needed to address before it would be declared unitary (i.e., no longer segregated) and thereby released from court monitoring. Over the next quarter century, the PCSSD gradually met its requirements for each part of Plan 2000, thus being released from court monitoring in that specific area.

The LRSD was declared unitary in 2007; the NLRSD in 2012; and the Jacksonville-North Pulaski District (created in 2016 out of the PCSSD) in 2025. The PCSSD, after fifty-six years of litigation, was declared fully unitary in February 2026, making it the last school district in Pulaski County to achieve this status.

For additional information:
Howell, Cynthia. “Expert Hands in Last Report in School Case.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 2, 2020, pp. 1B, 6B.

———. “Orders Followed, District Assures Desegregation Judge.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 20, 2024, pp. 1A, 3A. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2024/nov/19/pcssd-attorneys-argue-intervenors-are-trying-to/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

———. “School District OKs Payment to Lawyers in Desegregation Suit.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 28, 2023, pp. 1B, 6B. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/mar/28/school-district-oks-payment-to-lawyers-in/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

———. “Schools Unequal, Attorneys Argue.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 13, 2024, pp. 1B, 3B. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2024/aug/12/jacksonville-school-districts-newest-elementary/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

———. “Students: Don’t End Academy.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 18, 2024, pp. 1B, 6B. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2024/mar/18/students-dont-end-academy/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

———. “With One Hitch, 2 Districts Ruled Free of Court.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 7, 2021, pp. 1A, 7A. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/may/07/with-one-hitch-2-districts-ruled-as-free-of-court/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

Kruse, Nyssa. “From 1957 to 2023: How the Supreme Court Prevented Little Rock Schools from Achieving the Ideal of Desegregation.” Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality 13, no. 1 (2025): 14–68. Online at https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijlse/vol13/iss1/3/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

Li, Anne. “Judge Declares PCSSD Unitary.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 27, 2026, pp. 1A, 7A. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2026/feb/26/after-43-years-little-rock-area-school/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

Martirosov, Dmitry. “School District Declared Unitary, Freed from Suit.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, October 1, 2025, pp. 1A, 8A. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/sep/30/jacksonvillenorth-pulaski-school-district/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

———. “School District Inches toward Unitary Status.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, October 9, 2025, pp. 1B, 3B. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/oct/08/pulaski-county-districts-report-approved-decades/ (accessed October 13, 2026).

Stewart, Jeffrey. “The Integration of the Pulaski County Special School District, 1954–1965.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 78 (Summer 2019): 111–139.

Vinzant, David G. “Little Rock’s Long Crisis: Schools and Race in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1863–2009.” PhD diss., University of Arkansas, 2010.

Jeffery Stewart
Little Rock, Arkansas