A Life Is More Than a Moment: The Desegregation of Little Rock's Central High
The world has often heard about the desegregation crisis at Little Rock Central High School in 1957-58, and many have wondered how such a conflict could have exploded in that small Southern city, which heretofore had been noted for moderation. The author reveals that only five days after the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision, the Little Rock School Board announced it would end the segregated school system. Within a year, the board adopted a plan to integrate in stages. Photographer and author Counts, who had just started working as a photographer for the Arkansas Democrat, one of the town's two dailies, presents here his recollectionsAand photographsAof the event that put Little Rock on the map in the worst light. In this spare and accurate account, he makes a case for why the tragedy might never have occurred were it not for a governor, Orval Faubus, determined to resuscitate a flagging career by playing the race card to the hilt. Counts relates Faubus's refusal to allow black students to enter Central High until President Eisenhower sent in troops to enforce integration; the next year, Faubus closed all the high schools for a year until a court order forced them to reopen. This probing recollection is almost a primer of how one man disrupted a community for years to come. [The reviewer was a senior at Little Rock Central High during the desegregation crisis.AEd.]AEdward Cone, New Yor.-AEdward Cone, New YorkCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.