Brown in Fayetteville: Peaceful Southern School Desegregation in 1954

Abstract

with its decision in brown v. board of education (1954), the United States Supreme Court demanded a complete overhaul of the public education system in the South and brought racial segregation to the forefront of the nation's consciousness and conscience. The American public, white and black, could no longer avoid the issue or simply dismiss school segregation as the inevitable product of culture or tradition. Many Americans, seeing the gains African Americans had already made (e.g., blacks voted in many places and both the military and professional sports were integrated), hoped school desegregation would meet with similar success. But, aided by the Court's passivity in Brown II, segregationists began a campaign to fight desegregation. Ten of the eleven former Confederate states passed legislation allowing or (in the case of Mississippi) forcing districts to maintain segregated schools. Seven states passed laws withholding funds from integrated schools. This resistance was fiercest in the Deep South, but states such as Florida and Arkansas were not immune.1 There is more to the story than massive resistance, however. While images of angry mobs in Little Rock and New Orleans cemented themselves in the American consciousness, desegregation had largely unnoticed pockets of success-even in the months immediately following Brown. Fayetteville, Arkansas, was one such place. Within a week following Brown, Fayetteville announced its intention to desegregate, and, three months later, white and black students were attending the same local high school together. Fayetteville's experience shows that historians must take a more comprehensive approach to southern school desegregation, recognizing the quiet dignity that sometimes marked the process. Fayetteville was no racial Utopia, but the town successfully dealt with the most explosive racial issue of the twentieth century. Its experience is instructive in suggesting important ingredients of successful school integration-namely a lack of excessive preexisting racial tension coupled with firm local leadership. At the time the Court handed down Brown, Arkansas, like the rest of the former Confederacy, had completely segregated elementary and secondary schools. But separate did not mean equal. The state spent $102.25 per capita on white students but just $67.75 on each black student. Yet Gov. Francis Cherry announced that the state would obey the Court, noting that Arkansas had better race relations than many other southern states. The Arkansas Democrat reported that public reaction to the decision "indicated concern but no alarm."2 The newspaper clearly disagreed with the Court's ruling ("Trying to alter a social pattern by law before custom makes way for change has always seemed unwise to us"), but also denounced defiance, stating, "Surely, we can reach a common understanding without friction in order to preserve all the education and social gains that have been made."3 The Arkansas Gazette editorialized that Brown required "a sober reappraisal of the manner in which we have lived up to our long-accepted obligation to provide adequate educational opportunity for all our children .... Once again, we are faced with a great time of testing, but we are confident Arkansas will meet the future with good heart and good will."4 Leaders of both races were cautiously optimistic that if addressed locally and gradually, desegregation could occur without major incident. The state's brief to the Supreme Court, submitted in November 1954, advocated gradual integration, arguing that immediate action could have disastrous effects on Arkansas schools.5 Yet by the time the brief was filed, Arkansas had already begun to desegregate its schools. Within a few days of the Supreme Court's May 1954 announcement of Brown, three Arkansas school systems, including Fayetteville, had announced plans for desegregation, and a fourth moved ahead without making its intentions public. The Arkansas School for the Blind and the Deaf only planned to desegregate'those classes it did not currently offer to black students, a fact that, combined with the non-traditional status of the school, muted any potential protest. …