Ark. city marks school integration that wasn’t

Andrew DeMillo

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Two weeks before President Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce an order integrating Little Rock Central High School, a group of black ministers across the Arkansas River decided to try desegregating another all-white school on their own.

The morning of Sept. 9, 1957, six black students walked to North Little Rock High School and attempted to enroll, despite the local school board’s decision to postpone its desegregation. An epithet-hurling crowd of whites kept the North Little Rock Six from entering the building.

“I walked that same street every day, except this day it took me an hour to get three or four blocks,” said Richard Lindsey, one of the black students. “They just did not want us to get through.”

Lindsey and the five other black students were turned away and never attended the school, instead enrolling at all-black Scipio Jones High School. Ten years passed before any black students graduated from North Little Rock High.

Unlike Central High School’s integration by the Little Rock Nine — which Arkansas is marking with a month of speeches, panel discussions and ceremonies — the attempted desegregation at North Little Rock has received little attention. There is no plaque or marker and the North Little Rock Six are rarely mentioned.

“It’s a part of our city’s history that is little known,” said Mayor Patrick Henry Hays, who said he didn’t know much about the story until the last couple of years. “In some respects, it was overshadowed by what happened in Little Rock and that’s why there’s little known about it.”

The city planned to honor Lindsey and the other two surviving black students from the North Little Rock Six last weekend. Lindsey, who said he avoided walking up the front steps of the school for nearly 40 years, said he appreciates the recognition but doesn’t feel like the black students have been slighted in the history of the Little Rock crisis.

“I think the world has unfolded like it should, and I think that unfolded like it should have,” said Lindsey, 67. “I definitely don’t feel slighted by that.”

In the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision striking down segregated schools, the North Little Rock School Board had devised a plan to partially integrate the senior year of its high school in 1957 and follow with another grade each year.

But, across the river, Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to Little Rock Central to prevent nine black students from entering the school. On Sept. 3, 1957, the day after Faubus ordered the guard to the school, the North Little Rock School Board voted to delay its integration plan.

“We don’t want the National Guard camped on our doorstep,” one board member told the Arkansas Gazette at the time.

Spurred by attempts to integrate the largest high school in their sister city, a group of black ministers decided to try integrating North Little Rock High School on the first day of classes anyway.

“Since there was a court order to integrate the schools in Little Rock, my father and a few others in the community said, ‘Why don’t we try to integrate the schools here,’” said Harold Gene Smith, now 67. “We thought maybe they would allow us to complete our senior year there.”

The night before they planned to walk to the school, the students were instructed by the ministers to keep quiet and to avoid any confrontations with anyone who yelled at them.

“I was one of the ones who really didn’t want to go to start with,” said Gerald Persons, who said he was encouraged by his older sister to participate. “This was my last year of high school and I really didn’t know what we were going to be doing there.”

Desegregation did not come to North Little Rock as quickly as it did at Central High, where Eisenhower used federal troops to enforce the integration order on Sept. 25, 1957.

Organizers say they hope marking the anniversary of the attempted desegregation will lead to a permanent honor for the North Little Rock Six.

“We’ve had a number of people who had no idea this happened,” said Sandra Taylor Smith, director of the North Little Rock History Commission.

The surviving students said they appreciate the recognition, but aren’t expecting any special attention.

“It really doesn’t matter to me how we’re remembered,” Harold Gene Smith said. “We just did what we thought was right.”

(Associated Press)