Housing, Urban Development, and the Persistance of Racial Inequality in the Post-Civil Rights Era South

This article locates the well-known dramatic events of the 1957 Little Rock school crisis within the longer-term postwar racial struggles in that city, and in particular the ongoing battles over race, housing and urban redevelopment that continue today.

keywords:

• Housing
• Urban Development
• School desegregation
• Race relations

Notes

1. See, for example, Lawrence D. Reddick, Crusader Without Violence: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959); Lerone Bennett, Jr., What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1964); William Robert Miller, Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life, Martyrdom and Meaning for the World (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1968); David L. Lewis, King: A Critical Biography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970); Jim Bishop, The Days of Martin Luther King (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971).

2. William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle For Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); Robert J. Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985); David R. Colburn, Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877–1980 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle For Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Glenn T. Eskew, But For Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995); Stephen G. N. Tuck, Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940–1980, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001); John A. Kirk, Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002).

3. On women's activism in the movement see Vicki Crawford, Jacqueline Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965 (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1990); Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long? African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Peter J. Ling and Sharon Monteith, eds., Gender in the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999) reprinted (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004); Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin, eds., Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001). On the role of violence and armed self-defense, see Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999) and Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); on international dimensions see Michael L. Krenn, ed., Race and US Foreign Policy During the Cold War (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998); Michael L. Krenn, Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department, 1945–1969 (Armoruk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999); Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Carol Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

4. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996) and “Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights and Reaction Against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940–1964,” Journal of American History vol. 82 (Sept. 1995): pp. 551–578; Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1983) and “Massive Resistance in the Urban North: Trumbull Park, Chicago, 1953–1966,” Journal of American History vol. 82 (Sept. 1995), 522–550. A number of other works have explored similar themes, notably and most recently, Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).

5. On King and the SCLC's Chicago campaign, see Alan B. Anderson and George W. Pickering, Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986) and James R. Ralph, Jr., Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). On the 1966 civil rights bill see Stephen Grant Meyer, As Long As They Don't Move Next Door: Segregation and Racial Conflict in American Neighborhoods (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

6. See Kirk, Redefining the Color Line, chapter 5.

7. On Black life in early Little Rock, see Paul D. Lack, “An Urban Slave Community: Little Rock, 1831–1862.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly vol. 41 (Spring 1982), pp. 258–287; Willard B. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: the Black Elite, 1880–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 92–95; John William Graves, Town and Country: Race Relations in an Urban/Rural Context, Arkansas, 1865–1905 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1990), chapter 6; Tom Dillard, “Perseverance: Black History in Pulaski County, ArkansasAn Excerpt.” Pulaski County Historical Review vol. 31 (Winter 1983), pp. 62–73

8. Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration, Survey of Negroes in Little Rock and North Little Rock, Compiled by the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Arkansas, Little Rock, 1941, Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas Libraries, Little Rock, pp. 61–64.

9. On the Housing Act of 1949 see the special issue of Housing Policy Debate vol. 11 (Issue 2, 2000), pp. 291–520 (published by the Fannie Mae Foundation and available online at http://www.fanniemae foundation.org/programs/hpd/v11i2-index.shtml), particularly Robert E. Lang and Rebecca R. Sohmer, “Editors Introduction,” Alexander von Hoffman, “A Study in Contradictions: The Origins and Legacy of the Housing Act of 1949,” Arnold R. Hirsch, “Searching for ‘Sound Negro Policy’: A Racial Agenda for the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954,” Jon C. Teaford, “Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath,” and Charles J. Orlebeke, “The Evolution of Low-Income Housing Policy, 1949 to 1999.”

10. Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock) and Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock), May 10, 1950.

11. B. Finley Vinson, February 25, 1993 (Little Rock), interview with author.

12. Greater Little Rock Conference on Religion and Race, “Confronting the Little Rock Housing Problem,” box 7, folder 76, Arkansas Council on Human Relations Papers, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville.

13. Arkansas Gazette, January 29, June 8, 1952.

14. Arkansas Gazette, August 29, October 2, 1952. See also the materials on R. O. Burgess et. al v. Little Rock Housing Authority et. al. in Leffel and U. A. Gentry papers, box 1, folder 9, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Little Rock.

15. See Nat Griswold, “The Second Reconstruction in Little Rock,” 1968, unpublished manuscript in author's possession; Ben F. Johnson III, Arkansas in Modern America, 1930–1999 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000), pp. 148–161; Martha Walters, “Little Rock Urban Renewal,” Pulaski County Historical Review vol. 24 (March 1976), pp. 12–16; Margaret Arnold, “Little Rock's Vanishing Black Communities,” Arkansas Times (June 1978), pp. 36–43; and Stuart Eurman, “Consolidating Cities: An Urban Fiction,” Pulaski County Historical Review vol. 42 (Spring 1994), pp. 19–22.

16. Arkansas Gazette, July 13, 1950; February 11, 1951.

17. “A Report of the Racial and Cultural Diversity Task Force,” submitted to The Steering Committee of Future—Little Rock, December 31, 1992. Copy in author's possession.

18. Arkansas Gazette, February 15, 20, 21, 1953.

19. Arkansas Gazette, February 27, March 3, 4, 6, 1953.

20. Arkansas Gazette, March 6, 1953. For further discussion on Blossom's school policy and the 1957 Little Rock school crisis see John A. Kirk, “Massive Resistance and Minimum Compliance: The Origins of the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis,” in Clive Webb, ed., Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

21. Georg C. Iggers, “An Arkansas Professor: The NAACP and the Grass Roots,” p. 286, in Wilson Record and Jane Cassels Record, eds., Little Rock, U.S.A. (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1960); Little Rock Board of Education to Legal Redress Committee NAACP, Arkansas, September 9, 1954, Virgil T. Blossom Papers, Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville.

22. Iggers, “An Arkansas Professor,” pp. 286–287.

23. On Brown II and its aftermath, see J. Harvie Wilkinson III, From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration: 1954–1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 61–95.

24. Southern School News (Atlanta), July 1955, p. 3; Iggers, “An Arkansas Professor,” p. 287.

25. Iggers, “An Arkansas Professor,” p. 287.

26. Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South during the 1950s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), chapter 14.

27. Iggers, “An Arkansas Professor,” pp. 288–289.

28. Southern School News, February 1956, p. 11.

29. Ibid., March 1956, p. 4; Wiley A. Branton, “Little Rock Revisited: Desegregation to Resegregation,” Journal of Negro Education vol. 52 (Summer 1983), p. 253.

30. Iggers, “An Arkansas Professor,” p. 290.

31. Branton, “Little Rock Revisited,” p. 254; Tony Freyer, The Little Rock Crisis: A Constitutional Interpretation (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), pp. 56–58.

32. “Our Reason for Appeal,” Rev. J. C. Crenchaw, n.d., box 4, folder 10, in Daisy Bates Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison; Branton, “Little Rock Revisited,” pp. 255–256.

33. Southern School News, May 1957, p. 2; Branton, “Little Rock Revisited,” pp. 255–256.

34. “Report of Conference Between Little Rock School Superintendent and NAACP Representatives, May 29, 1957,” group II, series A, container 98, folder “Desegregation of Schools, Arkansas, Little Rock, Central High, 1956–1957,” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.; Arkansas State Press (Little Rock), June 7, 1957.

38. Mrs. L. C. Bates to Mr. Robert L. Carter, August 2, 1957, group II, series A, container 98, folder “Desegregation of Schools, Arkansas, Little Rock, Central High, 1956–1957,” NAACP Papers (Washington, D.C.); Virgil T. Blossom, It Has Happened Here (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), pp. 19–21.

39. Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1962), p. 59.

40. Unsigned letter to E. Grainger Williams, March 25, 1959, box 1, folder 1, E. Grainger Williams Papers, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Little Rock. On race and class issues in Little Rock see also C. Fred Williams, “Class: The Central Issue in the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly vol. 56 (Autumn 1997), pp. 341–344; Karen Anderson, “The Little Rock School Desegregation Crisis: Moderation and Social Conflict,” Journal of Southern History vol. 70 (August 2004), pp. 603–636; Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), chapter 12.

41. Southern School News, September 1957, p. 6; Roy Reed, Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997), pp. 196–197; Robert Sherrill, Gothic Politics in the Deep South (New York: Balentine Books, 1969), pp. 105–106.

42. On the Mother's League, see Graeme Cope, “‘A Thorn in the Side’?: The Mothers' League of Central High School and the Little Rock Desegregation Crisis of 1957,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly vol. 57 (Summer 1998), pp. 160–190.

43. Neil R. McMillen, “The White Citizens Council and Resistance to School Desegregation in Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly vol. 30 (Summer 1971), p. 104; Reed, Faubus, p. 188.

44. Warren Olney III, Assistant U.S. Attorney General, to Arthur B. Caldwell, U.S. Attorney General, September 13, 1957, box 5, folder 2, Arthur Brann Caldwell Papers, Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville; Reed, Faubus, p. 199; Corrine Silverman, The Little Rock Story (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1958), pp. 6–7.

45. See Reed, Faubus.

46. Branton, “Little Rock Revisited,” pp. 259–260; Reed, Faubus, pp. 199–200; Silverman, The Little Rock Story, p. 7.

47. See Kirk, Redefining the Color Line, chapter 5.

48. Mrs. Adolphine Fletcher Terry to Mr. William H. McClean, Commercial National Bank, Little Rock, Arkansas, March 9, 1970, Fletcher-Terry Papers, series I, box 3, folder 3, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Little Rock.

49. Albert Porter, May 7, 1993 (Little Rock), interview with author.

50. Terry to McClean, March 9, 1970, Fletcher-Terry Papers.

51. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), October 26, 2003.

52. “A Report of the Racial and Cultural Diversity Task Force,” submitted to The Steering Committee of Future—Little Rock, December 31, 1992. Copy in author's possession.

53. Howard Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865–1890 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) argues that segregation emerged as an alternative to separation and exclusion during that period. Graves, Town and Country and “Jim Crow in Arkansas: A Reconsideration of Urban Race Relations in the Post Reconstruction South,” Journal of Southern History vol. 55 (August 1989), pp. 421–448, argues for a relatively more fluid and complex set of race relations emerging across Arkansas at the time.

54. Elizabeth Jacoway, “Taken By Surprise: Little Rock Business Leaders and Desegregation,” p. 21, in Elizabeth Jacoway and David R. Colburn, eds., Southern Businessmen and Desegregation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

55. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 31, 2001 and October 6, 2002.