August 26, 1961

Duke Ellington canceled a concert, scheduled for five days later, at Little Rock’s Robinson Auditorium because of pressure from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) over concerns for safety and the auditorium management’s refusal to allow integrated seating. Jim S. Porter Jr., who had scheduled the concert, had been arrested earlier that year for entering the “colored” seating section and had been charged with “attempting to incite a riot.” By the time of a Louis Armstrong concert in September 1966, the auditorium had abandoned its unwritten segregation policy, and Armstrong played before a fully integrated sellout crowd.