North Little Rock

Six black teenagers, accompanied by four A.M.E. ministers, tried to integrate all-white North Little Rock High School on September 9, 1957. They were shoved back twice near the front door and denied entrance by about a dozen adults and former students. Newspaper accounts described a mob of people who hollered racial insults. No one was injured or arrested, though two young white men were detained by the police long enough to "cool off."

Under a limited desegregation plan adopted in July 1955, the North Little Rock School Board had voted to admit black 12th graders to the city's segregated high school in 1957. But on September 2, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus dispatched the National Guard to keep "the peace and good order" at Little Rock's Central High School. An anxious North Little Rock School Board met in special session on September 3 and postponed desegregation "indefinitely" because of the governor's action. "We don't want the National Guard camped out on our doorstep," one board member told an Arkansas Gazette reporter. The next day, guardsmen blocked the desegregation at Central.

Richard Lindsey, Gerald Persons, Harold Smith, William Henderson, Eugene Hall, and Frank Henderson, along with a seventh black student, had registered to attend North Little Rock High School in 1957. The six met with advisors and resolved to attempt entry anyway, despite the board's delay. "Our folks were with us 100 percent," said J.D. Webster, one of the four ministers who was joined on September 9 by F.D. Gipson, W.B. Banks, and J.H. Gipson. Webster told the Gazette the decision was "ours alone" and that the NAACP "gave absolutely no instructions to us or the students." He blamed the presence of troops at Central for encouraging resistance to the integration of North Little Rock High School. F.D. Gipson said the six felt good about their effort, the Gazette reported. "Their fear is not great now," he said.

The New York Times on September 10 featured a front-page photograph of the confrontation near the high school entrance. The location was misidentified as Central. In the photo, one of the white youths with a cigarette planted in his mouth was poised to push back Harold Smith and Gerald Persons. F.B. Wright, superintendent of schools, advised the black students later that day to return to S.A. Jones Senior High, the city's historically black high school. Although rumors swirled about another attempt, all seven enrolled in Jones and graduated the next spring. Three of the six who braved the hostile crowd are deceased today. Smith and Persons live out of state and Lindsey of the Lindsey Barbecue family lives in North Little Rock. During a 50-year reunion in 2007, the three symbolically ascended the steps of North Little Rock High School and walked through the front door.

No attempt was made again to integrate North Little Rock schools until August 1963 when five black students applied for admission to white secondary schools. Not under court order then, the School Board nevertheless faced pressure from black patrons and the Little Rock Air Force Base. The board rejected the applications by announced that integration would being in fall 1964. Without incident, eight black first- and second-graders desegregated Clendenin and Riverside elementary schools on September 3, 1964. In 1965, the School Board adopted a "freedom of choice" plan to desegregate all grades within three years. Protests from black patrons, however, led the U.S. Office of Education to force the School Board to integrate all grades by fall 1966. On September 6, 1966, 20 black students desegregated North Little Rock High School.

In 1968, the U.S. Department of Health and Education and Welfare gave the North Little Rock School District a deadline to "remove all vestiges of a dual school system." But H.E.W. approved a plan on July 31m 1968, that retained racially identifiable schools. A week later, civil rights lawyer John W. Walker sued the School District in federal court. The district submitted a neighborhood school plan in 1969 that U.S. District Judge J. Smith Henley allowed for one year only. In 1970, Henley approved the elimination of racially identifiable secondary schools by closing Jones Senior and Junior High Schools. Although opposed by a majority of the School Board, Henley ordered busing in 1971 to fully desegregate the district’s 20 elementary schools. The U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the order. Known as the Storm Plan for School Board member Fred C. Storm, the busing of 2,230 students—whites and 1,085 blacks—in September 1972.