The Lost Year

As the 1957-1958 academic year ended, Arkansas entered the summer with a new challenge. Federal Judge Harry Lemley ruled that Little Rock School District delay desegregation until 1961. The NAACP appealed to the US Supreme Court, which overturned the ruling and ordered the school district to continue desegregation. Governor Faubus then made a bizarre move: he closed the city’s four public high schools. Little Rock residents joined grassroots operations in favor or against the governor’s actions in what historians later called the Lost Year.

Just like Faubus' decision to call the National Guard, politics had motivated him to close schools. Firstly, Lemley had activated segregationists, who demanded further political action against the Brown v. Board ruling. There was a surge of optimism for Southern nationalism, as evident in the flood of fan mail to Lemley from an assorted lot: parents, World War II veterans, or out-of-towners concerned with the events at Little Rock. All struck a similar theme—desegregation was dangerous, it was a feature of creeping communism, and state leaders must resist it.

Secondly, the Lost Year had electoral implications. Historian Sandra Gordy explored this with respect to the 1958 gubernatorial election and concluded that "a ruling by Lemley to delay integration could be to Faubus’ advantage." His campaign dealt entirely on the segregation issue. In July, he won the Democratic nomination for governor, then a certainty for another term due to the state’s one-party system. He received the most votes for any candidate in an Arkansas primary, as he carried all 75 counties. Meanwhile, voters in predominately black areas supported other candidates.

Faubus pushed the state legislature to pass laws allowing the closure of any school threatened with desegregation and allow state funds to aid students in moving to any school of his or her choice. After the Supreme Court ruled, Faubus acted on that legislation and displaced some 4,000 students and their teachers from classrooms. To make sure voters knew who was to blame, a sign moved on the front lawn of Central High School announcing the closure, reading "THIS SCHOOL CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT."

Parents scrambled to find alternatives for their children's education. Many of the Little Rock Nine took correspondence courses or simply moved out of Arkansas. Parents of white children had attended private schools, an option not available to African-American families. Tragically, a significant portion of black students found no means of education at all. One private school corporation attempted to take advantage of the suddenly empty classrooms and hired teachers, but it ultimately closed down. Teachers then experimented with televised classrooms, but funding ran out. Oddly enough, high school football games continued.

Meanwhile, the state legislature passed laws mandating school administrators and teachers to disclose organizations with which they had affiliation—mainly the NAACP. The school board, by a questionable parliamentary procedure, fired dozens of teachers. It was just another strange moment of the year.

Communities grew worried over the city’s children as their day-to-day support system ended. Adolphine Fletcher Terry, the same woman who once tried to convince First Lady Faubus to reason with her husband, had to take a stand. Along with other upper-class women, she formed the Women's Emergency Committee (WEC) with the purpose of reopening the schools. It litigated a campaign against segregationist groups, the Capital Citizens Council, Mothers League of Central High, and the Committee to Retain Our Segregation Schools. Each organization ran efforts to remake the school board. Before, the crisis was waged among the mobs. Now, grassroots took control.

Terry used identical tactics from her work in the Women's Suffrage Movement to help raise her organization's effectiveness. The WEC conducted drives, make good use of publicity, and engaged with state legislators. However, she explicitly did not invite the participation of the leaders of Little Rock's black community, including Daisy Bates, in fear of diminishing WEC membership.

Local elections held in the summer of 1959 for the school board resulted in a wave of recalls of segregationist members. The Pulaski County Board of Education filled the vacant seats with moderates. In June, a federal court ruled the schools’ closure as unconstitutional. Local civil groups like the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce also argued that the schools should reopen.

The schools reopened in August, a month earlier than normal, as segregationists rallied and marched from the State Capitol to Central High School. Faubus called it a "dark day." The Little Rock police and fire departments broke up the mob with fire hoses, leaving the city with one more violent moment before the crisis had ended.