An Epitaph for Little Rock: A Fiftieth Anniversary Retrospective on the Central High Crisis

by John A. Kirk, Juan Williams

Overview

This collection of essays mines the Arkansas Historical Quarterly from the 1960s to the present to form a body of work that represents some of the finest scholarship on the crisis, from distinguished southern historians Numan V. Bartley, Neil R. McMillen, Tony A. Freyer, Roy Reed, David L. Chappell, Lorraine Gates Schuyler, John A. Kirk, Azza Salama Layton, and Ben F. Johnson III. A comprehensive array of topics are explored, including the state, regional, national, and international dimensions of the crisis as well as local white and black responses to events, gender issues, politics, and law. Introduced with an informative historiographical essay from John A. Kirk, An Epitaph for Little Rock is essential reading on this defining moment in America's civil rights struggle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557288745
Publisher:	University of Arkansas Press
Publication date:	03/01/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	148
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

John A. Kirk is professor of U.S. history at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Beyond Little Rock.

Table of Contents

Foreword   Juan Williams     vii
Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction: The 1957 Little Rock Crisis-A Historiographical Essay   John A. Kirk     xiii
Looking Back at Little Rock   Numan V. Bartley     1
The White Citizens' Council and Resistance to School Desegregation in Arkansas   Neil R. McMillen     11
Politics and Law in the Little Rock Crisis, 1954-1957   Tony A. Freyer     27
Orval E. Faubus: Out of Socialism into Realism   Roy Reed     43
Diversity within a Racial Group: White People in Little Rock, 1957-1959   David L. Chappell     55
Power from the Pedestal: The Women's Emergency Committee and the Little Rock School Crisis   Lorraine Gates     65
The Little Rock Crisis and Postwar Black Activism in Arkansas   John A. Kirk     89
International Pressure and the U.S. Government's Response to Little Rock   Azza Salama Layton     103
After 1957: Resisting Integration in Little Rock   Ben F. Johnson III     115
Notes     135
Contributors     179
Index     181

Editorial Reviews

The issues that combined so explosively in Little Rock in 1957 continue to roil American politics and law. That is why Americans continue to study what happened there for some insight into who we really are and where we are headed in this new century. The issue is still how to take race out of the equation when it comes to educating every American child.” —From the foreword by Juan Williams, senior correspondent for National Public Radio and author of Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary and Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965

From the Publisher