Entry Category: World War II to Faubus Era - Starting with A

On July 17, 1963, an African American teenager named Andrew Lee Anderson was killed while fleeing from a posse of white citizens and sheriff’s deputies. Anderson’s killing, and its classification as an “excusable homicide,” illustrates how white citizens of Crittenden County could commit acts of violence against Black citizens with impunity at this time and shows how the legal system failed African Americans. Earlier that day, sixteen-year-old Anderson had been mowing a lawn in Marion (Crittenden County) when a white woman accused him of sexually assaulting her eight-year-old daughter. The mother followed Anderson in her car and called for help, attracting some neighbors and local law enforcement who took over the pursuit. The armed posse was composed of six sheriff’s …

A key facilitator in the desegregation of public schools and businesses in the state, the Arkansas Council on Human Relations (ACHR) was formed in December 1954 out of the reorganization of the board of the Arkansas branch of the grassroots organization, the Southern Regional Council. Initial funding came from a grant, via the Southern Regional Council, from the Ford Foundation, as well as the assistance of Fred K. Darragh Jr., a noted Arkansas agribusiness leader and philanthropist. In the wake of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision, Nat Griswold, the first director, recognized two basic problems hampering efforts to desegregate Arkansas’s public facilities: white opposition to integration and political disunity among African Americans. The …

Arkansas Faith was a short-lived newsletter published by the White Citizens’ Council of Arkansas in 1955 and 1956. Subscribers to Arkansas Faith paid a three-dollar membership fee to join the White Citizens’ Council of Arkansas and received the newsletter as part of their membership. The newsletter followed the larger Citizens’ Council of Mississippi’s format. Such publications were copied hundreds of times around the country. Although each chapter had a distinct name and local flair, they all followed a similar format that included articles featuring Christian nationalism, anti-Semitic tropes, opinion pieces from a white supremacist perspective, and pieces on anti-communism, segregation, and politics. Arkansas Faith was edited by Curtis (Curt) Copeland, a transient segregationist newspaperman who co-founded the White Citizens’ Council …

In 1964, Ozell Sutton, an African American man, sought to exercise his right to eat at the Arkansas State Capitol cafeteria. Initially turned away, he later successfully sued in the courts for service without discrimination. The state’s attempt to privatize the cafeteria and thereby avoid desegregation was ruled unlawful. Nonviolent direct action demonstrations by students and a petition from local white clergy helped to speed the case through the courts. On July 15, 1964, Sutton attempted to eat a meal in the Arkansas State Capitol cafeteria in the basement of the building. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required the desegregation of public accommodations, had become national law just two weeks earlier. However, Sutton was refused service. On July 21, the capitol …

The weekly Arkansas State Press newspaper was founded in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1941 by civil rights pioneers Lucious Christopher Bates and Daisy Gatson Bates. Modeled on the Chicago Defender and other Northern, African American publications of the era—such as The Crisis, a magazine of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP)—the State Press was primarily concerned with advocacy journalism. Articles and editorials about civil rights often ran on the front page. Throughout its existence, the State Press was the largest statewide African-American newspaper in Arkansas. More significantly, its militant stance in favor of civil rights was unique among publications produced in Arkansas. Although in later years, Daisy Bates would be recognized as co-publisher of the paper and, in …