School Board Votes to Integrate
Four days after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was handed down on May 17, 1954, the Fayetteville School Board voted to begin integration of the high school at the start of the next fall semester. The board voted to take a measured approach, beginning with high school-age students and then integrating junior high grades one class per year and then the elementary schools.
In eastern Arkansas, the Sheridan School District in eastern Arkansas announced on the same day that it would integrate as well; however, the Sheridan school board rescinded its decision due to protests from White parents and White-owned businesses. In fact, the controversy led Sheridan to relocate Black families outside the school district boundaries.
On July 17, the Charleston, Ark., school board in Sebastian County voted to close its Black school and integrate all of its grades. At the time, only 11 African American students attended Charleston’s schools. The Charleston District began classes on August 23 but had purposefully tried to keep its integration out of the public eye. Partly as a result of this decision and partly because of Fayetteville’s early vote to integrate, most national media reported Fayetteville as the first school district to integrate in the Old South. Fayetteville’s fall classes started two weeks after Charleston’s though.
Beyond the southern states that had seceded during the Civil War, integration happened slightly earlier. Claymont High School in Delaware integrated its high school in 1952 after a lawsuit by Black families seeking desegregation.
Fayetteville had provided public education facilities for Black students even prior to its public facilities for white students. A school for African Americans opened in 1868 as the earliest known public school in Arkansas, and Fayetteville was subsequently identified as School District No. 1 in the state for that reason.
Organized by Ebeneazor Enskia Henderson, the school was built near the intersection of Olive Avenue and Sutton Street. It was supported by the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen’s Bureau and initially known as the Mission School. The school was organized to teach the sons and daughters of African American residents of Fayetteville, most of them recently emancipated during the Civil War. Henderson and his daughter, Clara, taught the school, which later became known as Henderson School.
In 1939, a new school was built on Willow Street for African American students and named Lincoln School. It provided education for students from first grade through eighth grade. For students who wanted to continue their education into high school, the Fayetteville School District made arrangements and allocated a portion of its budget to send those students to the all-black Lincoln High School in Fort Smith. Black families also often made arrangements further afield, especially if family members like aunts or uncles lived in a city with high schools for Black students, such as Little Rock, Hot Springs or even as far afield as St. Louis, Mo.
This arrangement continued until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which found that separate facilities were inherently unequal.
Four days later on May 21, the Fayetteville school board took up the question of how to meet the court’s ruling. As part of its rationale for integrating, some members of the Fayetteville school board suggested that integrating the high school would save the district money since high school students wouldn’t have to be transported to Fort Smith. The year that the district integrated, however, only seven African American students in Fayetteville were of high school age, so actual savings would have been nominal.
Regardless of motive, the board approved the decision.
When the Fayetteville Schools opened in the fall of 1954, seven African American students were enrolled, two juniors and five sophomores. The next year five more African American students entered the high school.
Pictured from left during the 1955-56 school year: top row, seniors Preston Lackey and Peggy Ann Taylor; middle row, juniors Mary M. Blackburn, Roberta Lackey, Elnora Lackey, Kenneth Morgan and Virginia Smith; and lower row, sophomores Loretta Blackburn, James Funkhouser, Pauline Conley, William Lee Hayes and Joseph Manuel. (Courtesy of Fayetteville School District)
Joe Manuel, second from left, played alongside white teammates. Other African American students on the team included William Lee Hayes and James Funkhouser.
More than a week ahead of the first day of classes, the Associated Press reported the following:
Negro and white children will attend an Arkansas high school together for the first time in history Sept. 13.
Six Negro children who were “registered and enrolled” last spring will attend Fayetteville high school. Four others are expected to enroll before the fall term opens.
The Fayetteville school system had announced last May right after a U.S. supreme court decision outlawing segregation — that Negro pupils would be admitted to the high school. Fayetteville has no Negro high school. In the past the school system had paid traveling expenses so that Negro students could attend a Negro high school at Fort Smith, some 60 miles away.
“Apparently, there is no opposition,” said Superintendent of Schools Wayne White in referring to the integration. “They will go to school just like anybody else.”
Although one adult protested outside the high school on the first day of classes, the integration of the high school students went smoothly, at least where Fayetteville was concerned. Some school districts scheduled to play football against Fayetteville refused to take the field with Fayetteville’s team, which was also integrated from the start of fall classes in 1954.
Fayetteville followed its graduated approach to integrating the other grades, putting off integration of the elementary schools until 1965, due in part to the upheaval in Arkansas during 1957 and 1958 when Little Rock tried to integrate Central High School and Gov. Orval Faubus called up the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the entry of nine Black students.
By the mid-1960s, though, the grade schools in Fayetteville were also integrated.
Fayetteville and Charleston Not Alone
Although Fayetteville and Charleston were the first to integrate in states of the Old South, several school districts in the upper South also chose to integrate after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Reports indicated that Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and West Virginia would begin integration during the fall semester. Columbia, Missouri, in fact, had already started integrating classes during its summer seesion. Other Missouri cities integrating included Springfield, Fredericktown, Kirksville and St. Joseph with nearly a dozen more cities integrating just their high school.
History Minute
The staff of the Fayetteville City Government Channel, led by manager Fritz Gisler, produce short videos about the history of Fayetteville in a series called Faytteville History Minute, which airs on the government channel. This week’s history minute is about the integration of Fayetteville High School in 1954.
Year-by-Year Integration Timeline by County
Sources
- Adams, Julianne Lewis, and Thomas A. DeBlack, eds. Civil Obedience: An Oral History of School Desegregation in Fayetteville, Arkansas, 1954–1965. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994.
- Prater, David. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas Culture and History.
- Brill, Andrew. “Brown in Fayetteville: Peaceful Southern School Desegregation in 1954.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 65 (Winter 2006): 337–359.