Elizabeth Huckaby

Central High Crisis

Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby (1905-1999) served as vice principal of girls at Little Rock Central High School during the Little Rock crisis of 1957. As a dedicated teacher, Huckaby spent the year of the crisis working in support of desegregation, protecting the Little Rock Nine, maintaining order at Central High, and promoting the education of students.

Huckaby was born in 1905 in Hamburg, Arkansas, to Henry Lewis Paisley and Elizabeth Merrell Paisley. After attending grammar school in Texas, Huckaby enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where she earned a degree in education in 1926 and a master’s degree in 1930. She was hired to teach at Little Rock Senior High School in 1930. Three years later, she married Glen T. Huckaby, also a Little Rock teacher. In 1946, she was promoted to assistant principal, later called dean of girls.

During the Central High Crisis, Huckaby's primary responsibility was to ensure the safety of the nine African-American students who were integrating Central High School. Later, she published a memoir titled, Crisis at Central High, which detailed the events of that year, challenges faced by the students, and her attempts to continue the education of students at Central High School.

The Elizabeth Huckaby Character Collection was developed by UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture intern Nicole Ursin. Ursin is a UA Little Rock Donaghey Scholar, double majoring in History and Anthropology with a minor in Nonprofit Leadership Studies. She plans to graduate in May 2019. Her passion is the preservation of history and she pursues this passion by working for different museums and archives in Little Rock. After graduation, she plans to obtain a Master’s degree in museum studies or public history.

Maintaining Business as Usual During the Crisis

Elizabeth Huckaby began the 1957 school year expecting to continue teaching students and to keeping order at Central High. As vice principal of girls, before the crisis she taught English and was responsible for the discipline of female students and for keeping attendance records. The crisis, however, forced her to leave the classroom so that she could spend most of her time disciplining the increasing student absences and suspending troublemakers who attacked black students. In addition to her growing administrative duties, the appearance of the National Guard disrupted the regular school business.

At the beginning of the 1957 school year, the National Guard’s presence deterred the daily school activities when Governor Faubus ordered the National Guard to keep the black students and all black staff members out of the school. In Crisis at Central High, Huckaby wrote that the National Guard blockade locked out the cafeteria employees and her book delivery. Without many of the cafeteria employees, lunch was severely delayed and many students missed their afternoon classes.

When the Army's 101st Airborne Division and National Guard troops arrived following President Eisenhower’s order, Elizabeth Huckaby had the additional task of working with the troops to make sure the students were protected. With the increasing student absences, the acts of aggression against black students, and the National Guard presence, Elizabeth Huckaby spent the entire school year performing the necessary administrative tasks that kept the school running.

Filtering Public Response and Student Propaganda

During the crisis, Huckaby's role shifted away from education as she was given the task of screening mail from the public, filtering public response from segregationist parent groups, and confiscating the anti-integration propaganda distributed by students. As vice principal and a known supporter of integration, Elizabeth Huckaby was given the task of screening mail from the public. Nearly everyone had an opinion on the Little Rock Crisis. Huckaby recalled that:

"In the office heaps of letters had accumulated–more than we could ever afford to answer or buy stamps for. View points in the letters ranged from the most violent segregationist to the most ardent integrationist. They came from all over the United States, from most of the European countries, South America, Asia and Canada.” (Page 38 of sixth draft for That Year at Central High, chapters 3-5)

While the public response poured into the administrative office, student responses to integration were distributed around school. Students who supported segregation distributed hate-fueled propaganda cards that attacked the black students, that complained about the National Guard's presence, and that attacked integration supporters in the administration - including Huckaby.

The Lost Year and the Purge

In the year following the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, all high schools in the Little Rock School District were closed to avoid integration. The teachers were still employed and often used as substitutes for lower grade levels, but no student received any high school-level instruction in Little Rock public schools that year.

In May of 1959, Elizabeth Huckaby was one of forty-four educators from Central High School to be fired by the Little Rock School Board. Community members that supported integration and that wanted the fired educators to be given back their positions came from a committee known as STOP (Stop This Outrageous Purge). Before the school year began in August 1959, a recall election removed three segregationist school board members from office and the fired educators were rehired for the 1959-1960 school year.

The Lost Year ended in June of 1959 when the federal court ruled that closure of schools and withholding of funds was unconstitutional. In August, Little Rock high schools reopened and integration resumed.

Elizabeth Huckaby's papers have a gap between the school reopening in 1959 and her retirement. Huckaby taught until 1969 when she retired after thirty-nine years of teaching and began working on her book, Crisis at Central High.

Crisis at Central High, Book and Movie

In 1980, Huckaby published Crisis at Central High, which recorded her memories of the integration crisis and the years following. The book detailed her role in assisting the students during the time of integration. Huckaby said she waited until after retiring, when she could not be fired, to publish a memoir about her experiences. The book details her experience during the crisis beginning a few weeks before the start of classes in 1957 and ending right after the graduation of 1958.

In 1981, the book was turned into a made-for-TV movie titled Crisis at Central High with Joanne Woodward starring as Elizabeth Huckaby. The film was shot primarily in Dallas, Texas, at the Woodrow Wilson High School.

The book and the movie commemorate Huckaby’s role in the Little Rock crisis as she attempted to support school integration, to maintain order among students, and to educate the students of Central High School.