Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby was an instructor of English and served as vice principal for girls during the desegregation of Little Rock Central High. The author of Crisis at Central High: Little Rock 1957-58, Huckaby documented events within the school as the first African-American students, the Little Rock Nine, were admitted into a population near 1,800 white students. By this time she had taught for 30 years and was 52 years old. Her administrative responsibilities were many and included protecting the six females among the Little Rock Nine as they were threatened and harassed by some students within the school. She earned anger and hostility from segregationist crowds surrounding the school, from many in the city and the entire region.
Early in the 1957 fall semester, many white students were removed from classes by their parents when the Little Rock Nine arrived with armed escorts from the 101st Airborne Rangers, while other students simply left the building. Huckaby recorded that as public school teachers they were anxious to get students back into classes, as “education was our major responsibility and integration a secondary problem in the social revolution of our time.”
Like many of the ninety faculty members in this large accredited school, Huckaby held a schools were revered in their own. However, the integration crisis was to split society in new and bitter ways. Black and white students in Little Rock had grown up in separate schools and interacted in the greater community within the historical hierarchy of white superiority over blacks. The desegregation crisis was now splitting the white community, the majority of whom opposed integration, some violently. Two white groups, the Capital Citizens Council and the Mother’s League of Central High, publicly acted against desegregation and opposed the smaller white community who would accept the Supreme Court mandate in its gradual implementation of school integration.
The 1957-58 crisis year continued with political machinations, court cases at all levels, bomb threats, and ongoing protests. However, by May 1958 Central High graduated a class of over 600, including the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, Ernest Green. Horace Mann High, the only accredited black high school in Little Rock, graduated its own all black senior class. Having completed the chaotic year, Huckaby and fellow teachers hoped for a relaxing summer and fully expected that the following school year would continue what they had begun.
The Lost Year
Few could have predicted what was to occur in 1958-59, now called the Lost Year. All high schools, black and white, in Little Rock were closed to students for an entire academic year after Governor Orval Faubus ran for a third term, called a special session of the legislature to grant him enormous state powers to fight integration, and defied another US Supreme Court order to continue with desegregation. Beginning on September 15, 1958, Faubus decreed all of Little Rock’s public high schools closed and denied 3,665 students a free public education. His actions were endorsed by a 3-to-1 margin in a city referendum, all of which increased racial tensions, and further divided the community into opposing camps.
Public high school teachers had signed contracts for the 1958-59 year and reported for work before the Faubus decrees. Teachers reported daily in both the black and white high schools, preparing for students who were to never arrive despite legal filings, legislative actions, election of new school boards, and court cases. While students scrambled to find nearby schools or moved to attend schools within the state and beyond, teachers at Central High began learning activities from one another, organized by Mrs. Huckaby. By October, the Little Rock School District was losing money sending per-pupil funds to schools that accepted their displaced students, while continuing to pay teachers in empty schools. They solved the problem, hiring no substitute teachers for the remainder of the year and sending high school teachers to sub in all elementary and junior high schools. Mrs Huckaby recorded that many in the faculty were disgruntled by the assignments.
The Purge
In the Summer, the Arkansas General Assembly had specifically targeted teachers by passing two acts: one requiring from to list all organizations and affiliations they held, and another that fired any state employee who belonged to the NAACP. In February the Arkansas Gazette revealed a scheme to recover a half-million dollars in withheld state funds by firing as many as a hundred teachers and administrators. The press named four people including Mrs. Huckaby. Governor Faubus claimed no knowledge of a plot but said he supported the move: “they did everything they could to discriminate against white students.” The actual purge did emerge in May when three of the six Little Rock School Board declared itself a majority, and refused to renew contracts for Huckaby and 43 other high school employees. At this point, part of the white community arose. Led by men, STOP (Stop this Outrageous Purge) was formed and joined the work of the existing Women’s Emergency Committee. In a twenty-day campaign these two groups organized to recall the three segregationist school board members. After a year of closed schools and the firing of teachers, voters narrowly accepted limited desegregation. Federal courts followed in June declaring two of Arkansas’s segregation laws unconstitutional: those withholding funds, and the closing of schools.
Mrs. Huckaby continued in place until her retirement in 1969. Her book was published in 1980, and a Time-Life Film based on her book starring Joanne Woodward as Huckaby aired on television in February 1981. At that time she said, “My goal was to produce a book after I retired when I couldn’t be fired.”
Elizabeth Huckaby Papers. Center for Arkansas History and Culture. University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas.
Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby Collection, 1957-1978. Special Collections. University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Gordy, Sondra. "Teachers of the Lost Year: Elizabeth Huckaby." Torreyson Library Special Collections. University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas.
-----. "Teachers of the Lost Year: Little Rock School District 1958-59." Ph.D. Diss., University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 1996.
-----. Through a Heroine’s Eyes: Elizabeth Huckaby and the ‘Lost Year.’” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 67 (Summer 2008): 141-167.
Huckaby, Elizabeth. Crisis at Central High, Little Rock, 1957-58. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
Sondra Gordy, retired professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas. She worked in teacher education and Arkansas History and has published on The Lost Year with emphasis on black and white public school teachers and students affected by Little Rock's first desegregation.