Jim Guy Tucker and the Lost Year
September heralds the beginning of Fall, bringing us cooler weather, shorter days, and the mixed emotions of children and parents as another school year begins.
Imagine, however, no school in September. The local schools in your area do not open their doors at the beginning of fall. The month comes and your children stay. What do you do? What will they do?
This scenario happened to a young Jim Guy Tucker, Jr. in 1958. His schooling up to this point was uneventful, spending time with friends, scouting, making good grades, and writing his autobiography. He was a good student who enjoyed school.
The World Changes and School Stops
In 1957, however, things changed completely for him and the entire United States. In 1957, nine African American students registered to attend the all-white Little Rock Central High. On September 4, 1957, the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter the school. Governor Orval
Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard and denied the Nine access to Central High. For the next two weeks the students kept up with their work the best they could despite not being allowed access to the school. Subsequently, a federal court ordered Governor Faubus to stop his interference, the Guard was nationalized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Little Rock Nine finally entered Central High. But they faced continued harassment and abuse. Jim Guy Tucker was in ninth grade at Hall High School.
Governor Faubus was not finished, though. He was running for a third term as governor, and despite orders from the U.S. Supreme Court to continue with desegregation, he closed all of the Little Rock high schools on September 15, 1958, to pander to the segregation crowd. This interrupted the education of 4,000 students and affected many families across the city. Faubus had hoped to lease out the public school buildings to private school corporations. The corporation would hire the former public school teachers and permit only white students to attend. The federal courts, however, saw through this scheme to delay desegregation and blocked this maneuver.
So where did this leave Jim Guy? For the 1958-1959 school year, Tucker lived with his Aunt Lillian and attended Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Florida. He was one of the fortunate Little Rock students as he still had access to a solid education, even getting to play on the Junior Varsity football team. His parents, obviously missing their son 900 miles away, corresponded frequently with Jim Guy and his Aunt Lillian. Their letters asked about his health and school life, but also relayed to him the state of affairs back in Little Rock.
But you have no idea what our school situation is, just hope it does not get to Florida. People with children don’t know how concerned you can get when it looks like a whole school year is being knocked in the head and they are not going to open schools here this year and maybe not for the next 3 or 4 years. The whole school system is shot. (Letter to Aunt Lillian from Willie Maude Tucker – September 17, 1958)
The Tampa Tribune interviewed Jim Guy about his experience as a displaced student. One of his concerns was not knowing where his fellow students were because not every family had the money or acquaintances to continue their education:
You don’t know where your best friend is now. He could be in Georgia, in the Army, or in school in some town near Little Rock. The ones who don’t have enough money to pay tuition or go away are the ones really suffering. They’re just not going to school. (Jim Guy Tucker - undated)
In fact, extremely poor families did not have that choice to send their children away so the children either took a job or dropped out of school altogether. The NAACP estimated that around 50% of the displaced African American students ultimately dropped out due to no viable alternative for them.
The Return of Little Rock Schools
During this Lost Year, in addition to students and their families scrambling to find an open school, several groups formed and fought to get the schools reopened in Little Rock. The fight continued until June 18, 1959, when the federal court again came to the rescue, declaring the closing of these schools as unconstitutional. Finally on August 12, 1959, the Little Rock schools re-opened. Jim Guy returned to his home city and to Hall High for his junior and senior year.
Tucker had benefited from his education despite the setback of The Lost Year. If anything the Lost Year taught him the value of education because he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard quickly, graduating in 1963. He returned to school to earn his law degree in 1968. In later years, he worked to improve the educational experience of Arkansans in his roles as United States Congressman, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor.