Prior to the United States Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, Black students in Fayetteville attended the all-Black Lincoln School through eighth grade. Beginning in ninth grade, however, the district paid for students to attend school in Fort Smith or Van Buren, where there was an all-Black high school. These students spent the semester in host homes, returning home on Christmas break before returning to school for the spring semester.
It was a costly endeavor for the Fayetteville School District - cheaper than maintaining an all Black high school, but expensive none the less.
The Brown decision, therefore, gave Fayetteville a way out of an economic conundrum. What is unique, however, is how quickly the school board acted and how professionally desegregation was performed.
Consider that the Supreme Court had announced Brown on May 17, 1954. Five days later, the Fayetteville School Board voted to desegregate the high school immediately. A day earlier, Sheridan, Arkansas, had declared its intent to integrate but eventually rescinded its decision after public protest. Fayetteville's decision, meanwhile, received scant attention in the press.
As the summer progressed, Fayetteville prepared for desegregation. The principals of the two schools, Louise Bell and Minnie Dawkins, met to work out details, planning the new students' course schedules. Meanwhile, students participated in integrated church events, and a high school student group, the Twenty-Six Club, assigned student escorts to the incoming Black students.
On September 10, five Black students- Mary Mae Blackburn, Laverne Cook, Elnora Lackey, Roberta Lackey, and Virginia Lee Smith - entered the high school along with all incoming sophomores. Two more - Preston Lackey and Peggy Taylor - would join with the juniors the following Monday. These seven students were recognized as the first Black students to attend a previously all-white school in the South.
Later, it would come out that Charleston, Arkansas, had in fact desegregated in late August but had kept its integration private so as not to provoke opposition. Fayetteville, meanwhile, could barely provoke attention. The event was mentioned in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and even in Japan's Nippon Times but always buried in the news.
In the Northwest Arkansas Times, the news appeared only once that fall, on September 11, under the headline, "Integration at School Started." The entirety of the story read:
Fayetteville became the first city in the Confederate South yesterday to break the segregation tradition following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and integrate Negroes and whites in its high school. Five Negro girls—Roberta and Elnora Lackey, Mary Mae Blackburn, Virginia Lee Smith and Laverne Cook—enrolled yesterday along with about fifty other high school sophomores. Three more Negroes are expected to enroll Monday when the junior and senior classes enroll. Although integration has been instituted in the high school, segregation still is maintained in the elementary and junior high school because of overcrowded buildings.
The story ran halfway down the front page, just under an article entitled, "Cab Driver Reports Holdup, Fort Smith to Elkins Trip."
In retrospect, this lack of attention was both the cause and the effect of the successful desegregation. The city's small Black population and university influence doubtless had impact as well, but much of the credit goes to the school board's decision to treat the decision as a matter-of-fact, and the preparation done by school officials and local citizens. With no one to trumpet the event, either in praise or opposition, the story died.
Of course, not everything was successful- a local minister summited a pro-segregation letter to the editor during the summer, a lone woman protested at the school on the first day, and there were a few racial epithets spoken to the new students. It took a decade for the district to complete desegregation at the elementary school level as well.
On the whole, however, this was an event that went phenomenally well. Even though the district did not desegregate its elementary school until 1965, it was still far ahead of the region. A 1964 study by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare found that ten years after Brown, only 2.4 percent of African-American children in the South attended formerly all-white schools.
The story of school desegregation is a multi-faceted one, and it is a story worth knowing because it is the story of so many individuals- individuals like the Fayetteville Seven.
Andrew Brill is a long-time Fayetteville resident and graduate of Fayetteville High School. He received a B.A. in History from Austin College, and a M.A. in Literature from Boston College. His work on Fayetteville desegregation has appeared in Flashback and Arkansas Historical Quarterly. He currently serves as the Director of Discipleship for Lightbearers Ministries, International.