THE MAIN OUTLINES OF THE LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS, school desegregation crisis of 1957-58 are now matter of public record.1 Less well known are the responses of those caught in the tides of history and tossed this way and by forces over which they had little or no control. Although it can hardly be said the experiences of the nine black students who integrated Little Rock's Central High School at bayonet point (the Little Rock Nine) have been given their scholarly due, this discussion examines the minority of white students identified as publicly acting against integration. It suggests such students were, as many of their contemporary antagonists suspected, marginal youngsters, if not hoodlums of both sexes.2 On the hand, they were like their white classmates: they came from the lower (but not the lowest) ranks of Little Rock society and rarely lived in affluent Pulaski Heights. On the other, they were different: they often (but not always) had problems adjusting to the rigors of school life and were minimally involved in the multifarious activities typical of large and prestigious high school. They were the pupils who by stalking out of school and actively abusing the Little Rock Nine both verbally and physically, attracted disproportionate attention, intimidated helpful whites, and tarnished the reputation of Central's student body as whole. They were the ones who, according to one of the most extreme segregationists, didn't bother with all that stuff from teachers about behaving properly.3 They were the ones who held girls under scalding water in the showers, fouled fresh new blouses and dresses, knocked books from hands, trod on heels, trashed lockers, spat, and hissed racial slurs in the corridors and stairwells. They were the ones who thumped black boys with wet towels in locker rooms, tossed rocks and snowballs containing stones, put thumbtacks on chairs, and besmirched walls and desks with racist graffiti. They were the ones who quickly made it clear to other white students abusive telephone calls, kicks, automobile vandalism, and isolation were the price of innocent friendship with the Nine.4 They were the ones who, in Melba Pattillo Beals' words, transformed Central into a furnace consumed our youth and forged us into reluctant warriors.5 Central's white pupils enter the historical record more as people acted upon than as actors in their own right. A few were interviewed by the press or appeared as anonymous antagonists in the memoirs of school officials like girls' vice-principal Elizabeth Huckaby and her male equivalent, Jay Powell. But, unless they did something particularly newsworthy, such as walking out of classes en masse, burning an effigy, or appearing on television broadcast, they have not generally been the subject of specific historical interest.6 Indeed, the only study to concentrate on the student population as such has been Beth Roy's Bitters in the Honey.7 Writing, however, with an agenda influenced by her hopes for conflict-free future, Roy, sociologist, is chiefly concerned with identity formation and the long-term impact of 1957's tumultuous events on the lives and attitudes of her sixty interviewees. While her work provides wealth of firsthand observations (albeit ones massaged by hindsight), it is not directly concerned with the day-to-day ructions are the focus of the present discussion. Pete Daniel and Phoebe Godfrey are among the few scholars who have published on the subject of white student responses, Daniel concentrating on the activities of the small number of publicly identified resisters and Godfrey on Governor Faubus's attempt to exploit parental anxieties about the sexuality of young white female students.8 Perhaps surprisingly, none of Central's 1957-58 students, either those already enrolled or new entrants, were thoroughly prepared for what was to come. Like most of their parents and the community at large, they knew only what they read in the press or heard by way of rumor. …
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May 16, 2024
Donghyun Kang + 1
Open Access