Little Rock’s neighborhoods and schools did not always look the way they do today. The city's neighborhoods were once much more integrated and the school system was much smaller and far less sprawled out across the city. In the post-World War II era this all changed. As Little Rock began to dismantle its system of Jim Crow segregation at mid-century, a new regime of segregation was imposed through purposefully using public and private policies and practices to create segregated housing patterns. Segregated neighborhoods grew hand-in-hand with the city's schools to produce a school system that is today becoming as racially divided as it was in the Jim Crow age of segregation.
As late as 1941, a study sponsored by the Greater Little Rock Urban League noted, "While Negroes predominate in certain sections…in Little Rock, there are…no widespread…'Negro sections' [of residence]." The passage of the federal Housing Act of 1949 changed all that. The act, designed to modernize cities in the post-World War II era, was used by Little Rock to begin a racial redistricting of the city. The intent of city planners to use federal housing policy as an instrument for achieving residential segregation was evident when black areas of residence were seemingly targeted for redevelopment because of their close proximity to white neighborhoods rather than their slum status.
While the Little Rock Housing Authority (LRHA) evicted black residents downtown, it built black public housing on the edge of the city limits as far away from white neighborhoods as possible. The first public housing projects built under the redevelopment plans were the 400 units of Joseph A. Booker Homes in the far southeastern city limits. Other housing projects followed a similar pattern. By 1990, the major public housing projects of the 1950s had 99 percent black occupancy. Predominantly white areas had only 5 percent of the city’s public housing units, and there were none at all in the far west of the city.
Given this residential gerrymandering, it is hardly surprising that Little Rock's first response to the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision was to build two new geographically segregated high schools in the city. In addition to the existing centrally located white Central High and black Dunbar High, Horace Mann High was built in the predominantly black eastern part of the city, and Hall High was built in the predominantly affluent white western part of the city. From the outset, this encouraged the school district to grow in a geographically segregated manner hand-in-hand with city housing policy.
Private-sector practices bolstered public policy in creating a geographically segregated city. "Restrictive covenants" were placed in property contracts to prevent resale to blacks. "Redlining" was used by banks and mortgage brokers to deny loans to black families in white areas of residence. Real estate agents used "racial steering" to show white purchasers homes only in areas of white residence, and black purchasers homes only in areas of black residence. In a maneuver known as "block-busting," real estate agents sometimes deliberately moved black families into centrally located white blocks of residence. Whites moving out were sold more expensive homes in the growing Little Rock western suburbs, while blacks paid high prices for the limited housing stock left available to them.
In 1971, when busing threatened to overturn the effects of residential segregation by forcing cross-city transportation of students to ensure integrated public schools, Little Rock witnessed a sprouting of new private schools. Their locations once again largely mirrored the city's segregated housing patterns, with private schools locating in predominantly white neighborhoods.
Since the 1950s, Little Rock’s policy of urban renewal, alongside other factors, has created a more residentially segregated city. In the twenty-first century, two halves define the city and its schools. One, to the east of Interstate 30 and to the south of Interstate 630, is predominantly black, Latino, and poor. The other, to the west of Interstate 430 and to the north of Interstate 630, is predominantly white and more affluent. Although some would insist that the current situation came about simply through a series of individual choices in the housing market, there is strong evidence (including material introduced into the 1982 Little Rock Schools desegregation lawsuit and upheld in the federal courts) to suggest that the city’s current geographically segregated housing patterns have been consciously created by public policy, with private-sector collusion.
Dr. John A. Kirk is the George W. Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Joel E. Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity at UA Little Rock. He has written extensively on the history of the civil rights movement in the United States, the South, and Arkansas.