1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

in the case of Evans v. Buchanan, 39 which by its terms applied to all
segregated districts in that State. However, only two of the seven desegregating
in 1959 actually were defendants in the suit. In 1960 after
a reversal of a lower court decision, 40 five districts admitted Negro pupils
to previously all-white schools, but only one of them was a defendant in
the action.
Although only 13 school districts desegregating for the first time in
1959-61 were actually under court order, another 15 were at least
pressured by pending suits or orders that could be extended to them.* 1
Indeed, litigation dominated the desegregation in this period. Voluntary
desegregation occurred in small districts with relatively small Negro
populations in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Arkansas
In September 1959 the high schools of Little Rock, closed during the
previous school year by order of Governor Faubus after desegregation
in 1957-58, reopened on a desegregated basis. This was the result of
a Federal court order 42 (later affirmed per curiam by the Supreme
Court) 43 invalidating the laws that authorized the Governor to close
public schools upon desegregation 44 and to transfer State funds from
them to other public or private schools. 45 The net effect of the order
was to reopen the Little Rock high schools under the original desegregation
plan. While the appeal was pending before the Supreme Court,
the Little Rock School Board, fortified by the appointment of new
members and supported by community leaders and citizens groups,
decided to reopen the high schools in August 1959 on a desegregated
basis. This was to be done by use of the pupil assignment law enacted
that year, and the implementing resolution adopted by the board in
July I959- 48 Out of approximately 60 Negro applications, 3 were
admitted to previously desegregated Central High and 3 to the then allwhite
Hall High School. 47
Mr. J. Gaston Williamson, then chairman of the <strong>Commission</strong>'s Arkansas
Advisory Committee, testified at the Gatlinburg conference: 48
44
Reported attempts were made in 1959, to again assemble a mob,
as was done in 1957, to protest the opening of integrated high
schools in Little Rock on August 12. A crowd of about 1,200,
some two-thirds of whom, according to the Governor's own State
police, were from out of town, gathered on the State capitol grounds
and were addressed by Governor Faubus. About 200 of these people
then marched on Central High, but were dispersed by the city
police.
For resisting the mob's attack and maintaining law and order
in Little Rock, the city police were bitterly denounced by Governor
Faubus and by the capital citizens council, but on the other