Little Rock 1957

Little Rock, AR is a treasure trove for the historical study of the convergence of public education in America and the American civil rights movement. In the fight for educational equality, the name Little Rock will forever resonate through American history.

Little Rock 9

The segregation Jim Crow laws were never meant to punish blacks and reward whites. Instead, their intent was to deliberately drive a wedge between blacks and poor whites. Segregation gave poor whites a sense of a superior social rank over their African-American neighbors, in essence, protecting the economic standing of the white elite minority by assuring the unlikelihood of an overwhelming majority interracial economic alliance of poor whites and blacks.

In the 1960’s`, Bill Moyers was a young staffer for President Lyndon Johnson. The renowned journalist recalls that in 1964, and after a long night of bourbon fueled racial discussion, the President gave his view of the racial unrest and the ensuing crisis enveloping the nation. “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” Johnson said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Even for those whites today old enough to have borne first hand witness to Jim Crow society, it is the black and white photos that are etched into our national memory that create the most vivid recall: Governor George Wallace of Alabama blocking the schoolhouse door; fierce attack dogs released on protesters; the funeral of three little black girls laid out in Sunday Church dresses, children murdered by a racist segregationist bomber; water hoses turned on peaceful protesters; gruesome lynchings with large crowds of smiling white “spectators,” some even children.

Many well-meaning whites of the 1950’s and 60’s - some good people, some even sitting around my grandma’s table drinking coffee- goodhearted and morally upright in every other way - were nonetheless loyal supporters of racial separation. Biblical justification or states’ rights were standard rationale for progressive and moderate whites of the day, when defending the necessity of Jim Crow. The condescending, paternalistic benevolence for “our colored friends” who are just not ready yet to lead as equals was an argument often given a polite accepting nod of approval by mainstream white society.

 1957 State's Rights

Often forgotten by history is the unpleasant reality that many black leaders benefited themselves from Jim Crow era segregation, keeping the black populace under their leadership in its place. For doing the bidding for the white establishment who could then keep their hands clean in a Jim Crow segregated town, the reward to such black overseers could be substantial.

There is lots of guilt to go around.

*****

Frustrated with the lack of progress, in 1957,Little Rock Central High School was targeted by those determined to integrate American public schools. Nine black students from Little Rock's all-black Horace Mann High School would attempt to attend classes at Little Rock Central High School. 

Central High School was viewed as a strategic choice to push the issue of school desegregation; a long time bastion of white pride in a city that was in many ways, for the time, viewed as a moderate city on the issue of civil rights. Several members of the all-white school board favored desegregation. 

After three years of foot dragging resistance by southern states to implementing fully the federal edict set forth by the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka  decision, President Dwight Eisenhower took decisive action. Little Rock became ground zero in the nation’s fight over school segregation. The country held its collective breath as a colossal constitutional crisis of wills unfolded.

The lines were now clearly drawn: federal army vs. state police, federal law vs. state law, federal supremacy vs. state sovereignty, Jim Crow separate but equal vs. the constitutional guarantee that all men are created equal.

 101st Airborne Division

On September 4, 1957, the first day of classes for the fall term, a white mob formed a human wall to block the front entrance of Central High School and deny entry to the black teenagers destined to be named by history as the Little Rock Nine. The Arkansas National Guard (including some young men who had months before graduated from LRC High), following orders of the Governor, stood back-up to the increasingly violent mob. For their own safety, the nine black students were hastily, by their sponsors, driven away from the school.

Future Supreme Court Judge Thurgood Marshall, on behalf of the students and the NAACP, appealed to the federal district court to secure an injunction to stop the governor’s denial of the students’ entry. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. personally appealed to President Eisenhower to intervene on behalf of the students. King warned the President that if the state of Arkansas was allowed to defy federal law, the cause of integration would be set back 50 years. Reluctantly, Eisenhower took the politically unpopular step of agreeing with King and sent in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to protect the students. They would remain on campus until graduation, the following June.

On September 23, 1957, the black students finally successfully entered the school. In June, 1958, Ernest Green became the first African-American to graduate from Central High School.

In the end, the progressives won. The Governor temporarily backed down and Little Rock Central High School was racially integrated. Under the heavy shadow of Army bayonets, federal law held supreme; but the price was steep and the fight was far from over.

In August of 1958, only weeks before the start of the new school year, Governor Faubus closed all four of Little Rock’s public high schools in an attempt to derail segregation. The standoff did not last for long. In December 1959, the US Supreme Court ruled the state’s action unlawful and the now desegregated Little Rock Central High School was reopened.

 1957 Little Rock Central Tigers

Lost in history is the performance of the 1957 Little Rock Central football team. The all-white squad was the pride of the segregated community. In the throes of a 35 game winning streak that spanned parts of four seasons, the Tigers finished the 1957 season with a 12-0 record. After the season, Little Rock Central was named by the Sporting News as the best high school football team in the nation.  The high school national website, Rivals.com, recently named the 1957 Tigers as one of the top 25 teams in the history of high school football. They outscored their opponents by a whopping 444-64 margin. The Tigers were never challenged on the field. 

The Tigers were so good their second string was recognized by many coaches in the state as the second best team in Arkansas. They took on all (white) comers. When the other high schools in the state couldn’t mount a challenge to Central, the Tigers of 1957 took to the road and beat the best teams from Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Kentucky. They often played to crowds larger than even the University of Arkansas Razorbacks of the day could muster.  The No. 1 team in Kentucky, Tilghman High of Paducah, was steamrolled by the Little Rock Central juggernaut, 46-13. "The greatest high school football team I've ever seen," was the assessment of a stunned Tilghman coach, Ralph McRight. So dominant were the Tigers that they punted only once during the 12 game season.

Ralph Brodie was a star on the '57 team, He was a state track and field champion in the high hurdles and president of Central's student body. In the fall of 1957, he was interviewed by Mike Wallace on the CBS Evening News.

Wallace: Would you say the sentiment [among students] is mostly toward integration or segregation?

Brodie: We are going to have to have integration sometime, so we might as well have it now.

Wallace: Would it make a big difference to you if you saw a white girl dating a Negro boy?

Brodie: I believe it would.

Wallace: Why?

 AR Gov. Faubus

Brodie: I don't know. I just was brought up that way.

Wallace: Do you think Negroes are equal in intelligence, and physically, to white people?

Brodie: If they have had the same benefits and advantages, I think they're equally as smart.

When the interview was aired, the organized segregationists of Little Rock were furious with the sellout by one of their own. Brodie received death threats.

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But the winds of change were now blowing - destined to soon reach gale force levels. Legendary Tiger's coach Wilson Matthews was gruff and crude, but also perceptive and pragmatic; he had glimpsed the future. Soon, he'd told his team, "there'll be black boys here so tall they can stand flat-footed and piss in a wagon bed, and you white boys won't even be team managers."

Under the oversight of army helicopters and howitzer cannons, the 1957 Little Rock Central Tigers turned in what many experts to this day claim to be the most dominant season in state high school football history. However, even in a southern state crazy for high school football, they are today a mere historical footnote, mostly forgotten and overshadowed by nine lonely and scared teenagers seeking an education beyond the stranglehold of Jim Crow.

 Little Rock Central High School

Despite Governor Faubus' decision to close all of the public high schools in Little Rock, at the time politically and morally just in the mind of the majority of white voters as preferable to allowing black and white children to sit together in the same classroom, he had no problem with Little Rock Central fielding a football team for the 1958 season. The bizarre setting of a high school with no students during the school day rolling out a nationally ranked football team every Friday night left the rest of the state shaking its head and further weakening  the governor's eroding public support . Faubus decreed not having a football team, would be "a cruel and unnecessary blow to the children." Evidently, in the Governor's opinion, over 4,000 high school students in Little Rock, white and black, with no school to attend was not, "cruel and unnecessary."  Tee it up. Game on!

After winning the first two games of 1958, stretching the winning streak to 35, the inevitable day arrived. New Orleans’ Istrouma High School stunned Central 42–0.

As the 1958 season progressed, many of Coach Mathews’ stalwarts began to jump a sinking ship, enrolling in area high schools where they could both play football and earn a high school diploma. The winning streak and the days of an all-white Little Rock Central football team had both been permanently laid to rest.