School officials at Hoxie stood up to segregationists

REMEMBERING ARKANSAS : School officials at Hoxie stood up to segregationists
TOM W. DILLARD

Posted on Sunday, September 2, 2007


If I ever write a book about heroes

of Arkansas history, K. E. Vance will

receive his full due. In 1955 Vance was the superintendent of schools at Hoxie, a small community bordering the town of Walnut Ridge in northeast Arkansas, when the school board voted to end racial segregation immediately. When a few local segregationists, aided considerably by “outside agitators” from Little Rock, Memphis and elsewhere, demanded that the board resign, Vance announced that the board acted for three reasons, one of which was that it was right in the sight of God. When the agitation continued, the school board went to court and won. This development in Arkansas integration history has been on my mind lately for two reasons. First, I have been imagining how differently the integration of the Little Rock public schools would have proceeded two years later if the leading authorities had boldly stood up to the segregationists who were trying to keep Central High School segregated. Second, Molly Boyd, one of my colleagues at the University of Arkansas Libraries, and I have been putting together a commemoration of the 1957 crisis in which the emphasis is on several successful integration efforts during the decade leading up to the crisis. It has led to an interesting series of discoveries.

It is only fitting that the first public educational institutions in Arkansas to be integrated were the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville and the University Medical School in Little Rock, both of which accepted a single black student in 1948. Silas Hunt, a graduate of Arkansas AM&N College in Pine Bluff (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff ) and a World War II disabled veteran, was accepted by the law school on Feb. 2, 1948. According to Richard A. Buckelew’s entry on Hunt in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, this was “the first time a black student had been officially admitted to a white Southern university since Reconstruction and the first ever admitted for graduate or professional studies.”

At first Hunt was taught in a segregated classroom in the school’s basement, but soon that arrangement fell apart after several white students joined him in the classes. Perhaps his war service, which included receiving severe wounds in the Battle of the Bulge and being left for dead, gave him an inner strength that belied his calm demeanor. Hunt died before the school year ended, a sad and premature death of a real pioneer.

Edith Irby, a graduate of Langston High School in Hot Springs and Knoxville College in Tennessee, was accepted by numerous medical schools, but she wanted to go to medical school in her home state. Like Hunt, Irby was of quiet disposition, and she accepted the segregated dining and bathroom facilities, but these restrictions were soon removed. She graduated in 1952, interned at University Hospital in Little Rock, practiced in Hot Springs, and then moved to Houston, where she continues to be a successful and popular practitioner.

The integration of the two professional schools in previously segregated Arkansas caught the attention of the national press. Opposition was muted, while Arkansas was portrayed as setting an example for ending school segregation in the rest of the former Confederate states. Much of this was due to the moderating influence of Gov. Sidney S. McMath, who succeeded “Dixiecrat” Gov. Ben Laney in 1949.

The public schools accepted integration more slowly than the professional schools. But, once the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in May 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional, Arkansas schools began to take action. The first school board to vote to integrate was at Sheridan, the county seat of Grant County south of Little Rock. A quick protest by about 100 segregationists caused the Sheridan school board to rescind their decision. Charleston, a small town in Franklin County, was next. On Aug. 23, 1954, 11 black students reported for classes in the Charleston elementary and secondary schools. This is believed to be the first school district in the former Confederacy to integrate all its grades. The whole process at Charleston was kept very low key, and little press coverage resulted.

The Fayetteville school board voted to desegregate within a week of the 1954 Supreme Court ruling. Unlike Charleston, Fayetteville authorities publicly announced they intended to integrate the high school in September 1954. On Sept. 10, seven black students began classes at Fayetteville High School. The Arkansas Democrat reported that “breaking one of Dixie’s oldest and most prized traditions was accepted by both Negro and white students with an air of indifference.”

Hoxie was the next district to decide to integrate. On a swelteringly hot July 11, 1955, 21 black children entered the previously segregated schools. Everything went fine until Life magazine ran a feature on the integration of Hoxie. It was then that the segregationists, led by representatives from Little Rock of White America, Inc., and the Arkansas White Citizens Council, began to actively oppose the school board decision in Hoxie.

The segregationists chose the wrong school board when they took on the Hoxie schools. The board was a strong one, with prominent businessman Howard Vance, the brother of Superintendent Vance, serving as president. When the segregationists threatened massive resistance, the board hired two prominent lawyers and filed suit in federal court. Eventually the courts issued an injunction against the segregationists, and Hoxie became the first school in the Arkansas Delta to be integrated. All of this occurred before the Central High crisis in 1957. That is why the commemoration I am helping plan for mid-September in Fayetteville is titled “Before Little Rock.” The Little Rock crisis did not have to happen. Anyone wishing to attend the commemoration should contact me. Tom W. Dillard is the founding editor of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture (www. encyclopediaofarkansas. net ) and head of the special collections department at the University of Arkansas Libraries in Fayetteville. E-mail him at

tdillar@uark. edu