July 11, 1955

Hoxie (Lawrence County) became the first school district in the Delta to integrate. Twenty-five black children enrolled peacefully amid 1,000 white students in a school district that had a substantial black population, unlike the previously desegregated Charleston (Franklin County) and Fayetteville (Washington County) school districts. The peaceful desegregation of Hoxie schools led to a story in Life magazine, which in turn resulted in mounting white opposition that closed the schools temporarily; they reopened after a federal court barred segregationists from preventing the admission of black students.