Higher Education in Arkansas

Arkansas lays claim to being the only formerly Confederate state to admit African-American students to its higher education institutions without litigation. In the years between 1872, when James McGehee enrolled at the University of Arkansas and 1964, when the Civil Rights Act removed most remaining vestiges of legal segregation from public colleges and universities, Arkansas higher education institutions admitted black students under very controlled and limited circumstances, but without the force of direct court orders.

McGehee was the first, and the only black full-time student in any Arkansas college until January 1948, when Silas Hunt entered the University of Arkansas School of Law. When hunt dropped out of school in the summer of 1948 because of illness, Jackie Shropshire took his place as the sole black law student at the university. While Hunt's classes were in a basement room separate from the main classroom, Shropshire sat in the regular classroom with his peers, due not to the administration's enlightened sense of equality, but to a severe shortage of space. That fall, Edith Irby Jones entered the University of Arkansas Medical School, and would be the first black graduate of an Arkansas professional school and the first woman graduate of the medical school. The following year, Shropshire was the first black graduate of the University of Arkansas School of Law. Over the next few years, a few African-Americans enrolled in professional and graduate programs in the university system, but black students in the state had no educational options other than Arkansas Branch Normal College, opened at Pine Bluff in 1875. That option would change with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that rocked the segregated world of American public education.

By the summer of 1955, the presidents and boards of trustees of Arkansas universities and colleges knew they had to open their undergraduate programs to black students or face law suits similar to those faced by other Southern states. The University of Arkansas (three female nursing students), Arkansas State College (three males), Arkansas Polytechnic College (one male), and Henderson State College (two males; two females) admitted a limited number of black students that fall, all carefully selected by their respective communities for their academic potential and their "character," defined as their ability to get along in the predominately white schools. These schools continued their restricted enrollment policies for several years, admitting limited numbers of carefully selected black students. The experiences these young people faced allowed them to receive an education at these formerly white institutions, but the social and academic isolation these young people faced kept their college experiences from being real racial integration.

While classes and academic facilities were open to the students, other campus amenities were not. None of them lived in campus housing, and only Arkansas State University allowed them to eat in the main cafeteria with white students that first year. The usual campus social activities were not open to these students, including any academic clubs that required students to travel as a school group. While the black male students participated in Arkansas State's required ROTC program, they were not allowed to join the campus Arkansas National Guard unit, by state law a whites-only organization.

George Hudgens, the first black graduate of Arkansas Tech University, described his campus experience as "an abject sense of loneliness," but also one that made him a stronger person. The black students at other schools agreed with that assessment, although they reported varying degrees of interactions with whites. Maurice Horton recalled that the racial relationships at Henderson State University were much like what he experienced in the military and in his career as an educator. Fred turner and Larry Williams agreed that their groundbreaking experiences at Arkansas State prepared them for their successful careers.

By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally barred discrimination against black students on white campuses, those early pioneers had graduated and moved into professions and careers that took them into a larger world that was becoming increasingly integrated. Most of the young men entered military service as officers, by virtue of their ROTC training, and pursued professions as engineers, mathematicians, and educators. Many of the young women became educators. They left behind an open door of equal access to public education for all Arkansas students.