Black History Month

Americans were riveted to their television sets in 1957, when a violent mob barred black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School and faced off against paratroopers sent by a reluctant President Eisenhower. That set off a firestorm of protest throughout the nation and ultimately led to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Cooper v. Aaron, reaffirming Brown v. Board of Education's mandate for school integration "with all deliberate speed" and underscoring the supremacy of federal and constitutional authority over state law. Noted scholar Tony Freyer, arguably our nation's top authority on this subject, now provides a concise, lucid, and eminently teachable summary of that historic case and shows that it paved the way for later civil rights victories. He chronicles how the Little Rock school board sought court approval to table integration efforts and how the black community brought suit against the board's watered-down version of compliance. The board's request was denied by a federal appeals court and taken to the Supreme Court, where the unanimous ruling in Cooper reaffirmed federal law-but left in place the maddening ambiguities of "all deliberate speed." While other accounts have focused on the showdown on the schoolhouse steps, Freyer takes readers into the courts to reveal the centrality of black citizens' efforts to the origins and outcome of the crisis. He describes the work of the Little Rock NAACP--with its Legal Defense Fund led by Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Branton--in defining the issues and abandoning gradualism in favor of direct confrontation with the segregationist South. He also includes the previously untold account of Justice William Brennan's surprising influence upon Justice Felix Frankfurter's controversial concurring opinion, which preserved his own "deliberate speed" wording from Brown. With Cooper, the "well morticed high wall" of segregation had finally cracked. As the most important test of Brown, which literally contained the means to thwart its own intent, it presaged the civil rights movement's broader nonviolent mass action combining community mobilization and litigation to finally defeat Jim Crow. It was not only a landmark decision, but also a turning point in America's civil rights struggle.

Recounts the 1957 incident in which nine black children were prevented from entering school.

This work looks at one of the most significant events in the struggle for black civil rights in America. In 1957 the Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas began integration. Resistance forced President Eisenhower to send federal troops to protect nine black students as they entered the school. It was some time earlier, in 1954, that the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation was unconstitutional.

Winner of the 2010 Booker Worthen Literary Prize and the 2009 Ragsdale Award. From the Civil War to Reconstruction, the Redeemer period, Jim Crow, and the modern civil rights era to the present, Ruled by Race describes the ways that race has been at the center of much of the state's formation and image since its founding. Grif Stockley uses the work of published and unpublished historians and exhaustive primary source materials along with stories from authors as diverse as Maya Angelou and E. Lynn Harris to bring to life the voices of those who have both studied and lived the racial experience in Arkansas. Topics range from the well-known Little Rock Central High Crisis of 1957 to lesser-known events such as the Elaine Race Massacres of 1919 and the shocking yet sadly commonplace attitudes found in newspaper reports and speeches. Through the words of the most powerful Arkansans such as racist Arkansas Govenor Jeff Davis (1901-1906) to the least powerful, including an unflinching look at the narratives of former slaves, readers will come away with increased awareness of the ways that race continues to affect where Arkansans live, send their children to school, work, travel, shop, spend leisure time, worship, and choose their friends and life partners.

Drawing on court records, newspaper accounts, penitentiary records, letters, and diaries, White Man's Heaven is a thorough investigation into the lynching and expulsion of African Americans in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kimberly Harper explores events in the towns of Monett, Pierce City, Joplin, and Springfield, Missouri, and Harrison, Arkansas, to show how post-Civil War vigilantism, an established tradition of extralegal violence, and the rapid political, economic, and social change of the New South era happened independently but were also part of a larger, interconnected regional experience. Even though some whites, especially in Joplin and Springfield, tried to stop the violence and bring the lynchers to justice, many African Americans fled the Ozarks, leaving only a resilient few behind and forever changing the racial composition of the region.

Daisy Bates (1914-1999) is renowned as the mentor of the Little Rock Nine, the first African Americans to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. For guiding the Nine through one of the most tumultuous civil rights crises of the 1950s, she was selected as Woman of the Year in Education by the Associated Press in 1957 and was the only woman invited to speak at the Lincoln Memorial ceremony in the March on Washington in 1963. But her importance as a historical figure has been overlooked by scholars of the civil rights movement. Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas chronicles her life and political advocacy before, during, and well after the Central High School crisis. An orphan from the Arkansas mill town of Huttig, she eventually rose to the zenith of civil rights action. In 1952, she was elected president of the NAACP in Arkansas and traveled the country speaking on political issues. During the 1960s, she worked as a field organizer for presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to get out the black vote. Even after a series of strokes, she continued to orchestrate self-help and economic initiatives in Arkansas. Using interviews, archival records, contemporary news-paper accounts, and other materials, author Grif Stockley reconstructs Bates's life and career, revealing her to be a complex, contrary leader of the civil rights movement. Ultimately, Daisy Bates paints a vivid portrait of an ardent, overlooked advocate of social justice.

"These are the stunning photographs that shocked the conscience of the nation in 1957. President Dwight Eisenhower was so moved at the beating of veteran Alex Wilson that he ordered 1,200 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, and he federalized the Arkansas National Guard to quell the "disgraceful occurrences." But how did it happen? Little Rock seemed an unlikely place for such violent hatred; it did not even see itself as part of the Deep South and had voluntarily decided to desegregrate the schools. Essays by Will Campbell, Bob McCord, and Ernie Dumas chart the path leading to the crisis, as well as the impact of the crisis on the national civil rights movement." "Young Will Counts had been with the Arkansas Democrat for only about three months on that fateful Labor Day in 1957. Recently graduated from Indiana University with a master's degree, he had been pleased to get a job with his hometown newspaper, though he didn't expect to see much action." "Governor Orval Faubus' surprise decision to surround Central High with Arkansas National Guard troops and prevent nine black students from entering changed everything. The prospect of covering a major civil rights story in his own hometown was exhilarating. He headed for the school wearing a "blend-in" plaid shirt and armed with his beloved small camera. Three Life magazine staffers - Francis Miller, Grey Villette, and Paul Welch - found that their coats and ties quickly identified them as outsiders. They were attacked by the mob and (adding insult to injury) arrested by the police. Will was able to move freely through the crowds and was accepted everywhere as a native son. His photographs capture the essence of those dark days."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A political history of the most famous desegregation crisis in America The desegregation crisis in Little Rock is a landmark of American history: on September 4, 1957, after the Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in public schools, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called up the National Guard to surround Little Rock Central High School, preventing black students from going in. On September 25, 1957, nine black students, escorted by federal troops, gained entrance. With grace and depth, Little Rock provides fresh perspectives on the individuals, especially the activists and policymakers, involved in these dramatic events. Looking at a wide variety of evidence and sources, Karen Anderson examines American racial politics in relation to changes in youth culture, sexuality, gender relations, and economics, and she locates the conflicts of Little Rock within the larger political and historical context. Anderson considers how white groups at the time, including middle class women and the working class, shaped American race and class relations. She documents white women's political mobilizations and, exploring political resentments, sexual fears, and religious affiliations, illuminates the reasons behind segregationists' missteps and blunders. Anderson explains how the business elite in Little Rock retained power in the face of opposition, and identifies the moral failures of business leaders and moderates who sought the appearance of federal compliance rather than actual racial justice, leaving behind a legacy of white flight, poor urban schools, and institutional racism. Probing the conflicts of school desegregation in the mid-century South, Little Rock casts new light on connections between social inequality and the culture wars of modern America.