Desegregation of Higher Education in Arkansas

Abstract

Arkansas institutions of higher education had a total enrollment in the fall of 1957 of 21,2571 and 2,346 were enrolled in the four Negro colleges of the state. Approximately 11 per cent of those enrolled were Negroes in a state in which 22 per cent of the population were Negroes in 1950. There were only about 50 Negroes in 1957-58 enrolled as regular full-time graduate and undergraduate students (other than summer session enrollments) in the state colleges, the University of Arkansas, and one private college. Five of those were graduate students at the University, 10 in the various schools of the Medical Center of the University, and the balance were undergraduates at the University and at various colleges in the state. Little Rock is widely known. Less known but significant in the history of desegregation is the fact that the first Negro to enter a state university in any of the former Confederate states since Reconstruction enrolled in the University of Arkansas in 1948. The first Southern city to announce a policy of desegregation was Fayetteville in which the University of Arkansas is located. That decision was made at a regular meeting of the school board on Friday, May 20, 1954, after the decision of the Supreme Court on May 17. With Little Rock and the