ABOUT THIS BOOK

“It was one of those periods that you got through, as opposed to enjoyed. It wasn’t an environment that . . . was nurturing, so you shut it out. You just got through it. You just took it a day at a time. You excelled if you could. You did your best. You felt as though the eyes of the community were on you.”—Glenda Wilson, East Side Junior High

Much has been written about the historical desegregation of Little Rock Central High School by nine African American students in 1957. History has been silent, however, about the students who desegregated Little Rock’s five public junior high schools—East Side, Forest Heights, Pulaski Heights, Southwest, and West Side—in 1961 and 1962.

The First Twenty-Five gathers the personal stories of these students some fifty years later. They recall what it was like to break down long-standing racial barriers while in their early teens—a developmental stage that often brings emotional vulnerability. In their own words, these individuals share what they saw, heard, and felt as children on the front lines of the civil rights movement, providing insight about this important time in Little Rock, and how these often painful events from their childhoods affected the rest of their lives.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

LaVerne Bell-Tolliver, herself one of the “first twenty-five,” is an associate professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Social Work. She has worked in the fields of mental health and child protective services and is senior pastor of Bullock Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Little Rock.

REVIEWS

“LaVerne Bell-Tolliver focuses on stories that haven’t been told before, which automatically makes them important for just about any community. I almost think those stories could be about anything—childhood games, ghost stories, eccentric relatives—and she could have written a version of this book. But her work has special power because it concerns the entry of some brave people into the previously forbidden world of the white schools. This is an important book.”
—David Stricklin, Director, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

“LaVerne Bell-Tolliver’s work is a critical benchmark for American ethnographies; her narrative is deeply revealing, accessible, sensitive, and insightful. This is an illuminating text for all scholars interested in how ethnic groups undergo and experience social change through key moments in American history. As such, this work will likely inspire generations of scholarship in cultural history and social ecology in Arkansas, the American South, and beyond.”
—Justin M. Nolan, associate professor and chair, Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas

“It might seem redundant to remind ourselves that the people featured in video footage of news stories — the black-and-white images capturing a precise moment in our shared past — are actual human beings, not simply a visual complement. We forget this, though; the images today move too quickly. The impressions are too fleeting, and there’s a future-seeking urgency to click or swipe to the next thing before we even have a chance to fully grasp what we’re seeing. Often, it takes a book like Dr. LaVerne Bell-Tolliver’s “The First Twenty-Five: An Oral History of the Desegregation of Little Rock’s Public Junior High Schools” to cut through the Hollywood sheen of made-for-television history and punctuate the lives of those who shaped and changed our world. ”
—Matt Baker, Arkansas Times, February 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Foreword by Joel E. Anderson

Acknowledgments

I. Overview

Introduction

Chapter 1. Setting the Context

Chapter 2. Phase Two: Historical Introduction: Junior High Desegregation

II. Our Stories

Equilla Banks Webb

Alfreda Brown

Myrna Davis Washington

Shirley Hickman

Sarah Jordan Talley

Glenda Wilson

LaVerne Bell-Tolliver

Kathleen Bell

Pinkie Thompson

Henry Rodgers

Wilbunette Walls Randolph

Clarence Johnson

Alice Joiner Kimball

Kenneth Jones

Brenda Sims Clark

Sandra Smith

Alvin Terry

Joyce Williams Warren

III. Conclusion

Chapter 8. What We Discovered

Chapter 9. Recommendations

Author’s Note

Appendix 1. Study Method

Appendix 2. Arkansas’s Constitutional Challenge to Block Desegregation

Appendix 3. Arkansas Pupil Assignment Law

Appendix 4. Demographic Information

Appendix 5. Excerpt of Interview with Mr. Ozell Sutton

Bibliography

Index

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