The Special Education Committee Hearing

The Central High Crisis of 1957-1958 was the opening round in the long struggle to desegregate Little Rock's public schools. Controversy over the Little Rock Board's reluctance to implement a federal court order to desegregate Central High School came to a head in the summer of 1958 when Governor Orval Faubus ordered all of the closure of a school facing integration. No high school student, black or white, attended classes during the Lost Year of 1958-1959. Having already signed employment contracts, teachers sat in empty classrooms.

A neglected episode during the Lost Year is evidence that anti-Communists played a key role in opposing social reform in Arkansas six decades ago. A hearing held at the state capitol under the tutelage of the Special Education Committee (SEC), a 13-member subcommittee formed by the Arkansas Legislative Council, ostensibly dealt with Communist influence in Arkansas. Based on hearsay, circumstantial evidence, and information already public knowledge, the probe seemed to be typical for the McCarthy Era.

What the SEC found most disturbing was agitation for racial and class equality. Attorney General Bruce Bennett declared before television cameras that deliberate subversion by the Communist Party (CPUSA) did not threaten American society as much as the intentions of well-meaning liberals. The SEC's summary report was candid: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) "has been the moving factor in filing integration suits in this State, designed not only to integrate the schools, but the public parks, swimming pools and golf courses, and has the ultimate goal of invalidating the statutes forbidding intermarriage among the races."

While it could subpoena witnesses living in-state, the SEC wasn't empowered to cite uncooperative witnesses for contempt. This is why Bennett interrogated sympathetic witnesses and introduced photocopies of documents. He focused on past events and organizations that were either defunct or beyond his reach.

Veteran lawmaker J. L. "Bex" Shaver discussed a 1935 investigation of left-wing Commonwealth College near Mena. Secretary of State C. G. "Crip" Hall testified about a failed attempt by Henry Wallace to run for president in Arkansas as the Progressive Party’s candidate in the election of 1948. According to Hall, Wallace met local civil rights activists Daisy and L. C.  Bates and Ladislav Pushkarsky, executive secretary of the Arkansas Committee for Wallace, at the home of Connecticut-born Leonard Farmer. Alleged Communists, Farmer and Pushkarsky no longer lived in Arkansas by the time of the SEC probe.

The star witness was J.B. Matthews, a reputed expert on Communist subversion. He discussed Lee and Grace Lorch, suspected Communists and friends of the Bateses. Grace gained public notice when she confronted a hostile crowd of pro-segregationist whites outside Central High in September 1957. Her husband taught mathematics at Philander Smith College and was active in the local NAACP. Despite living in Little Rock, neither the Lorches nor the Bateses had been subpoenaed to appear before the SEC. President of the State Conference of the NAACP, Daisy was already on record for not cooperating with the Faubus administration.

Although the CPUSA always had a negligible membership in Arkansas, "communism" was a euphemism for social reform causes like civil rights. Legislation against dissident groups long on the books in Arkansas anticipated undisguised segregationist laws passed by the General Assembly in the late 1950s. One measure—Act 10 of 1958—requiring public educators to formally certify with the state government what civic groups they belong to started life as an anti-Communist bill vetoed by Faubus the year before.

The Arkansas Legislative Council eventually dropped the probe and never released SEC findings, or opened its files on the matter to the press. However, the hearing may have been part of a wider investigation of the Central High situation already established by Bennett and SEC Chairman Peter Van Dalsem of Perry County, an effort that had enlisted State Police investigators to question Central High teachers and students during the spring of 1958. This investigation may also have been tied to the purge of 44 teachers and administrators a year later, as well as to surveillance of the Women Committee to Save Our Schools.