A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School

The Arkansas National Guard is an armed forces reserve unit under the dual authority of the State of Arkansas and the National Guard of the United States. They can be mobilized either by the United States President or the Arkansas Governor.

Before the nine’s intended first day at school, Faubus makes a speech declaring that “Units of the National Guard have been or are now being mobilized with the mission to maintain or restore the peace and good order of the community” (66). At first, LaNier thinks the soldiers are there to protect her from segregationists, but when the group arrives at school and the guard turns them away, she realizes “they were they to keep us out” (71). Faubus had ordered the Arkansas National Guard to enforce segregation.

When Eisenhower orders the 101st to Little Rock, he also puts the National Guard under federal orders rather than state orders.

Paul Lawrence Dunbar Jr. and Sr. High School was the segregated all-Black high school in Little Rock that LaNier attends for several years before transferring to Central. The school used “outdated textbooks, limited supplies, and inferior equipment” handed down to them from Central (34). So much of the city’s budget went to the construction of Central in the late 1920s that little was left over for Dunbar. Between 1912 and 1932, John D. Rockefeller and Julius Rosenwald worked with Booker T. Washington to build almost 5,000 schools for Black students: They privately financed the construction of Dunbar for $400,000. It had 34 classrooms spread over 200,000 square feet, 5,000 books in the library, and no gym until 1950. In the 1950s, its teachers made about three fifth’s what Central’s made, and its students received only two-thirds of the funding.

Despite this, Dunbar “was far more modern than the one-room shacks where black children were educated throughout much of the South” (35). Many of its teachers had advanced degrees, and it was accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. After desegregation and the construction of additional high schools in the 1950s, Dunbar became solely a junior high school. As of 2023, it is called Dunbar Magnet Middle School.

Between 1910 and 1970, roughly six million Black Americans moved from the southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and Western states: This is called the Great Migration. Black Americans moved to flee the oppressive rules of southern segregation and to pursue jobs in industrial industries that were more popular in northern, western, and eastern areas. A factory job in a northern city often paid three times as much as sharecropping—an exploitative type of farming employment—in the south (“The Great Migration.” History.com. Updated 30 August 2022).

When LaNier stays with her Aunt M.E. in Chicago, she notes that she and neighbors had been part of the Great Migration. LaNier’s immediate family are some of the many who move northward “to break free of the strangleholds that Jim Crow had on the places of their birth” (155). Branches of her extended family as well as herself and many of her friends also move away from the South.

These two words refer to ending the separation between two groups—in the context of American Civil Rights, between Black and white Americans. LaNier uses these words interchangeably. Desegregation began in the military when President Harry Truman passed an executive order demanding integration in 1948. The ongoing fight by the NAACP to enforce and protect the rights of non-white citizens is largely responsible for increasing court rulings enacting desegregation in schools and public spaces. After Brown v. Board, public schools were asked to integrate.

The ruling in favor of educational integration received massive backlash in the southern United States. Some Southern states tried to stall integration as long as possible, with many areas not integrating until almost 10 years later. The last school to be legally desegregated in the United States was Mississippi’s Cleveland High School in 2016 (Domonoske, Camila. “After 50-Year Legal Struggle, Mississippi School District Ordered To Desegregate.” NPR. 17 May 2016).

Jim Crow was a popular racist caricature in minstrel shows. He was usually played by white people in blackface and was intended to mock, belittle, and dehumanize Black people and customs for comedic purposes. His name was adopted for the discriminatory legislation that Southern states enacted after the Civil War.

Jim Crow legislation sought to naturalize white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Laws determined where Black people could work and for how much, which public facilities they could use, how and if they could vote, and how they could interact with white people. Black people who were perceived as transgressing these laws and customs were often subject to vigilante justice such as lynching. This was the case with Emmett Till, who allegedly whistled at a white woman and was subsequently hunted by white men and lynched.

Jim Crow also stacked the legal system against Black defendants. Under the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was declared illegal “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” (“Thirteenth Amendment.” Constitution of the United States. Congress.gov). As such, courts often unfairly targeted and convicted Black people in a legal continuation of slavery. Herbert and Maceo are subject to the anti-Black racism of Jim Crow-era law enforcement and court systems.

Central is the formerly all-white high school LaNier transfers to as Little Rock begins educational desegregation. It was built in 1927 for $1.5 million and, at the time, was “the most elaborate and expensive high school in the nation” (34). Its campus extends across four blocks and includes a large football stadium. In the 1950s, its athletics, academics, and extracurricular program had a “stellar reputation,” and graduates often went into “the top-rated colleges in the country” (33). It had 100 classrooms spread over 600,000 square feet and 11,000 books in the library. It also had greenhouses for science classes, a professional stage and lighting for theatre programs, a gymnasium and stadium, and a 2,000-seat auditorium.

It was forcibly desegregated in 1957, when Eisenhower deployed a division of the United States Army to enforce legally mandated educational integration and to protect the Little Rock Nine from the white mob of segregationists. For the 1958-1959 school year, the public school was shut down by Faubus to prevent integration. During this time, it was leased to private all-white high schools.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization founded in 1909 to protect and advance the rights of Black Americans. Its founders include many early 20th-century civil rights leaders, including W.E.B. Du Bois, who organized and presided over its first meeting. Since its founding, the NAACP has worked consistently to overturn racist legislation. The efforts and activism of its members were key in the educational desegregation LaNier describes.

Many of LaNier’s adult allies, mentors, and advocates, such as Mrs. Bates, work for the NAACP. The organization actively fights against Faubus and the state in court to enforce integration. NAACP members from other states take in Black Little Rock students during the year Faubus shuts down the public high schools so that the children can get an education.