LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK

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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK
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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK

• Public school segregation, unequal funding
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)LRSB says it
  will comply
• Brown v. Board of Education (1955)all
  deliberate speed
• Blossom Plan
• Supported by the business elite

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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK
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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK

• Local NAACP lawsuit, 1956
• Class conflict over the Blossom Plan
• Resistance in September, 1957 as Little Rock
  Nine tried to enter CHS
• Elizabeth Eckford

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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK
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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK

• Central symbolic event in years after the Brown
  decision
• Slogan Remember Little Rock
• Role of television the ritual arena form the
  drama of race

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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK

• Fall, 1957 riots orchestrated
• Rise of Massive Resistance Citizens Councils
  use of law to subvert law
• Threat of interracial dating and marriage
• Postwar changes in dating and sexuality going
  steady

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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK

• Segregationists interpreted the presence of the
  troops as federal plot that threatened their
  honor, autonomy, and manhood
• Defiance the necessary response

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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK

• Enabled segregationists to claim legitimacy
• Used stereotypes of African American men

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Womens Emergency Committee

• Forms, 1958
• All women, all white
• Very significant political force
• More liberal on race, critical of business
  elites ideas of progress
• Enabled moderate success in school board
  elections
• Disbanded in 1962

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LESSONS FROM LITTLE ROCK

• Title VI of 1964 CRA
• Culture wars, then and now
• Legacy of race neutral law forged by moderates
  in 1950s
• Fundamentalist Christianity as basis for moral
  conservatism and racism of segregationists