School Desegregation

Aaron v. Cooper
aka: Cooper v. Aaron
Aaron v. Cooper, reversed by the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Ci...
Act 10 of 1958 [Affidavit Law]
A special session of the Arkansas General Assembly passed Act 10 in 1958 as one of sixteen bills designed to b...
Act 115 of 1959 [Anti-NAACP Law]
In 1959, the Arkansas General Assembly passed Act 115 as one of sixteen bills designed to bypass federal deseg...
Arkansas State Sovereignty Commission
aka: State Sovereignty Commission
The Arkansas State Sovereignty Commission (ASSC) was created in Feb...
Melba Pattillo Beals (1941–)
Melba Pattillo Beals made history as a member of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African American students invo...
Desegregation of Bentonville Schools
Bentonville (Benton County) was one of the earliest school districts in Arkansas to admit African American stu...
Virgil Tracy Blossom (1906–1965)
Virgil Tracy Blossom was a professional educator who served as superintendent of Little Rock (Pulaski County) ...
Vivion Mercer Lenon Brewer (1900–1991)
Vivion Mercer Lenon Brewer is best known for helping to found the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Sc...
Capital Citizens' Council (CCC)
The Capital Citizens’ Council (CCC) was one of many similar organizations established throughout the South t...
Central High School Neighborhood Historic District
Made nationally famous during the 1957 desegregation crisis, Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski Count...
Desegregation of Central High School
aka: Crisis at Central High
aka: Little Rock Desegregation Crisis
In its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision,...
Desegregation of Charleston Schools
Much has been written about the Little Rock School District desegregation in 1957. However, the Charleston Pub...
Mamie Katherine Phipps Clark (1917–1983)
Hot Springs (Garland County) native Mamie Phipps Clark was the first African American woman to earn a Doctor o...
Committee to Retain Our Segregated Schools (CROSS)
Formed in 1959 to bolster the segregationist cause in the aftermath of the desegregation of Central High Schoo...
Will Counts (1931–2001)
aka: Ira Wilmer Counts
Ira Wilmer (Will) Counts Jr. was a photographer best known in Arkan...
L. Clifford Davis (1924–2025)
L. Clifford Davis was an attorney whose active participation in the legal challenges of the civil rights movem...
Ethel Beatrice Ross Dawson (1907–1984)
Ethel Dawson was a civil rights leader in Lincoln County who emphasized the necessity of self-sufficiency and ...
Desegregation of Des Arc Schools
The 1966 desegregation of schools at Des Arc (Prairie County) was accomplished under the leadership of Arkansa...
Dove v. Parham
Dove v. Parham was a federal desegregation lawsuit filed in the fall of 1959 in the U.S. District Court, Easte...
Elizabeth Ann Eckford (1941–)
Elizabeth Ann Eckford made history as a member of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African American students who...
Desegregation of Fayetteville Schools
Between 1954 and 1965, Fayetteville (Washington County) underwent the gradual integration of all primary and s...
Desegregation of Fort Smith Schools
At the time the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decis...
Jean Gordon (1926–2024)
Jean Thomas Gordon devoted her long life to education, social justice, women’s rights, environmental protect...
Carolyn Jean Green (1943–)
In May 1966, Carolyn Jean Green was one of the first two African American students to graduate from what is no...
Ernest Gideon Green (1941–)
Ernest Gideon Green made history as the only senior of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African-American student...
Amis Robert Guthridge (1908–1977)
Amis Robert Guthridge was a Little Rock (Pulaski County) attorney and businessman best known for his role in o...
Billy James Hargis (1925–2004)
Billy James Hargis was a fundamentalist Christian minister who asserted that large segments of the American po...
Edwin Luther Hawkins Sr. (1914–1974)
Edwin Luther Hawkins Sr. was an African-American educator in Little Rock (Pulaski County) who served as princi...
Desegregation of Hot Springs Schools
Hot Springs (Garland County), a tourist town, had one of the largest school districts in Arkansas at the time ...
Desegregation of Hoxie Schools
During the summer and autumn of 1955, proponents and opponents of school integration across America were watch...
Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby (1905–1999)
Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby, who served as an instructor of English for thirty-nine years, was vice principal fo...
Silas Herbert Hunt (1922–1949)
Silas Herbert Hunt was a veteran of World War II and a pioneer in the integration of higher education in Arkan...