We Dont Intend to Have a Story: Integration in the Dollarway School District

JOHN B. PICKHARDT DURING THE SUMMER OF 1959, a federal judge ordered that three AfricanAmerican students be admitted to the all-white Dollarway High School for the next school year. Still smarting from their defeat in Little Rock, Arkansass leading segregationists rallied in nearby Pine Bluff to fight the court order. On August 21, a crowd of about 1,000 gathered with prominent segregationists Jim Johnson and Amis Guthridge in attendance. At the crowds insistence, Johnson gave an impromptu speech, declaring, Dollarway is the gateway to Southeast Arkansas. . . . When Dollarway falls, we might as well pitch in the sponge. Guthridge followed with an hourand-twenty-minute speech that ended with him vilifying the press and federal officials as outsiders interfering in Arkansass business. Before leaving the stage, Guthridge pointed out reporters from the Arkansas Gazette and the New York Times in the crowd. The reporter from the Gazette had his notebook stolen by a group of men after he copied the license plates of those in attendance. The crowd jeered and threw rocks at the Times reporter until she fled.1 The demonstration seemed to suggest that Dollarway, located in a part of the state with a large African-American population, might even surpass Little Rock in massive resistance to desegregation. Arkansas attorney general Bruce Bennett tacitly acknowledged that possibility when he assured the press he was optimistic that Dollarway wont become another Little
1 Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), August 22, 1959; Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock), August 22, 1959.

John B. Pickhardt is an honors graduate of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

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Rock.2 Yet when integration finally did come to the district the following year, segregationist groups like the Citizens Council offered no resistance and even backed the Dollarway school boards decision to proceed with token integration. Dollarway High School would experience its share of strife, but violence emerged from within the student body rather than being stirred up by organized segregationist groups. By the early 1960s, the era of massive resistance to integration was fading in Arkansas. Minimum compliance replaced massive resistance as the preferred means of fighting integration. This method sought to use gradualism and token desegregation to limit integration while keeping control of schools in local hands.3 Through ten years of court litigation, the Dollarway school board practiced this technique, balancing heel-dragging with token desegregation in order to forestall federal intervention. The board would work closely with local law enforcement to prevent any largescale public violence that might provoke such attention. These methods kept the struggle over integration in Dollarway largely confined to the courtroom. Discussions of integration in Arkansas often end with the resolution of the Little Rock crisis in 1959, ignoring not only the success of minimal compliance in that city but also the course of desegregation elsewhere in the state. In particular, there has not been sufficient study of school integration in the Arkansas Delta. The case of Dollarway, then, offers an opportunity to fill out the story of school desegregationand of minimum compliance in Arkansas. Dollarway School District Number 2 of Jefferson County is located just north of Pine Bluff. At the time of the U.S. Supreme Courts 1954 Brown decision, this small district included a little piece of northwest Pine Bluff, but for the most part consisted of the area between the city limits and the Arkansas River to the north. The district got its name from the Dollarway Road, which ran southeast from Pulaski County to Pine Bluff and bisected the urban portion of the district. The Missouri Pacific Railroad ran almost parallel, several hundred yards to the east of the road. The district also included a noncontiguous area several miles to the west centered on the Hardin community, the White Hall School District separating the two portions. By the mid-1950s, the district operated three schools. Dollarway Elementary and Hardin Elementary schools received the areas white students, and Townsend Park Elementary received the black students. DollarPine Bluff Commercial, September, 1, 1959. John A. Kirk, Massive Resistance and Minimum Compliance: The Origins of the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis and the Failure of School Desegregation in the South, in Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction, ed. Clive Webb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 78.
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A third-grade class at Townsend Park in 1967. Courtesy T. T. Tyler Thompson. way School was located just west of the Dollarway Road, and Townsend Park was about one mile to the east, on the other side of the railroad tracks.4 The population of the district was roughly 50 percent white and 50 percent black in the mid-1950s. The communities were, for the most part, separated by the highway and railroad. The white population lived to the west of the Dollarway Road, and the black population lived east of the railroad tracks. The detached Hardin area was almost completely white. In the primary part of the district, these demographics began to tip to a black majority over the course of the drawn-out integration process.5 The Dollarway campus had opened in the fall of 1914 as a one-room structure open to the areas white students. The areas black elementary students were educated at churches and preaching seminars. For much of its first forty years of operation, Dollarway only offered instruction up to the eighth grade. The district sent white students wishing to continue their education to Pine Bluff, Watson Chapel, or White Hall High Schools, while black high school students attended Merrill High School in Pine Bluff. Townsend Parks history began in 1937, when the president of Ar4 The route of the Dollarway Road generally followed that of the later U.S. Highway 65. Arkansas Chamber of Commerce map of Pine Bluff, series 15, box 538, folder 1, Orval Faubus Papers, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville. 5 Cato v. Parham, 297 F. Supp. 403 (1969).

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kansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College (AM&N), the states public institution of higher learning for African Americans, donated one hundred acres of land to the state as a park for the areas AfricanAmerican community. The park was named in honor of William J. Townsend, the longtime principal of Merrill High School.6 After World War II, new jobs at the federal governments Pine Bluff Arsenal brought an influx of families, many of whom were black, into the area. In 1951, Dollarway received a federal grant to build a new elementary school to handle the increase in students. Built adjacent to Townsend Park, it consolidated four smaller black schools in the Dollarway area. The next year, another grant allowed for the construction of a junior high school on the Dollarway campus. The rapid expansion of the district continued over the next few years. A third federal grant allowed for the construction of Townsend Park High School for black students to begin in 1954. It opened the following year.7 Dollarway continued using federal money to maintain segregated schools after Brown. At this time, the district still sent its white high school students to surrounding districts. But in 1955, Pine Bluff school officials told Dollarway they could no longer accept its students due to overcrowding and other problems. The Dollarway board decided to add a high school unit to the existing all-white school complex, which would open for the 1957-1958 school year.8 Building continued in 1961 with the addition of Pinecrest Elementary School, which was constructed to accommodate the increased number of students coming from Hardin.9 By fall 1957, both the Dollarway and Townsend Park complexes offered grades one through twelve, though Townsend Park High School had not received accreditation. For the 1957-1958 term, Dollarway School District had an average daily attendance of 2,060 for grades one through twelve, with 1,017 at the Dollarway campus and 1,043 at Townsend Park. The breakdown of high school and elementary students at each school was fairly similar. Dollarway School had 388 high school students and 629 elementary students, while Townsend Park enrolled 331 high school students and 712 students in its elementary school. The district spent $152 per capita on Dollarway students, and $120 on the Townsend students. Dollarway High School students were the districts

6 T. T. Tyler Thompson, Dollarways Pathways, the Story of the Dollarway School System (unpublished ms. in possession of author), 4-6. 7 Ibid., 7. 8 Arkansas Democrat, September 18, 1959. 9 Thompson, Dollarways Pathways, 7.

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Aerial view of the Dollarway campus in 1960. Courtesy T. T. Tyler Thompson. most costly pupils at $158. Townsend High students were the least costly at $114.10 In other words, the district was spending 28 percent less on the Townsend High students. Thus, there was little economic incentive to integrate, as there was in Arkansas districts that spent considerable money paying tuition to other districts to educate their black high school students. Some school districts that integrated soon after Brown, like Fayetteville, had actually been paying more per capita for black students than white.11 Not everyone in Dollarway welcomed news of the construction of Townsend Park High School. As early as 1954, William Dove, a member of the Pine Bluff chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a small group of parents from the local black community asked the Dollarway school board to desegregate, only
A. W. Ford to John G. Rye, State of Arkansas Department of Education audit for Dollarway School District, 1957-1958, series 15, box 538, folder 1, Faubus Papers. 11 Johanna Miller Lewis, Implementing Brown in Arkansas, in With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education, ed. Brian J. Daugherity and Charles C. Bolton (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008), 5-7, 9.
10

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to be refused. Dove feared the new Townsend Park High School would lack accreditation and slow integration of Dollarway schools.12 The group, part of a small church community whose members were involved in the NAACP and civil rights movement, included the Dove, Cato, York, and Smith families. These families, and others, would play prominent roles in the desegregation of Dollarway. The lead roles fell to George Howard, Jr. and his daughter Sarah. George Howard had received his degree in 1953 from the University of Arkansas School of Law, one of the first five black students to graduate from the university. After graduating, Howard began a law practice in Pine Bluff, where he also served as the head of the local NAACP. He later succeeded Daisy Bates as the president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP branches.13 Howards history of civil rights activism had begun during his service in World War II, when he protested the treatment of black sailors on his aircraft carrier, and went on to include school integration cases in El Dorado, Fort Smith, and West Memphis. He would eventually become the first African-American federal judge in Arkansas.14 Years after the final court case, Sarah Howard could recall no specific strategy in pushing for desegregation in Dollarway instead of nearby Pine Bluff. It had just happened that the church groups children were enrolled in the district. She called it a family undertaking.15 Pine Bluff might have seemed the likelier locale. The city was distinctive in having a large and independent African-American community anchored around Arkansas AM&N. Prominent civil rights attorneys W. H. Flowers and Wiley Branton called the city home. But the presence of the college might actually have slowed development of an integration movement in Pine Bluff. AM&N depended on the state legislature for funding. Because of this, the school strongly discouraged students from openly supporting movements that might seem radical to legislators.16 The process of desegregating Dollarway began after the second Brown ruling in 1955, which gave southern school boards wide latitude in
Southern School News 1 (May 1956): 2. John A. Kirk, Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 160; Judith Kilpatrick, Desegregating the University of Arkansas School of Law: L. Clifford Davis and the Six Pioneers, Arkansas Historical Quarterly 68 (Summer 2009): 137-140, 144-146, 152-154; Sarah Howard Hobbs, interview with author, March 13, 2009, Little Rock, Arkansas. 14 Linda Satter, Howard, Longtime Judge, Dies at 82, Arkansas Democrat Gazette (Little Rock), April 22, 2007. 15 Hobbs interview. 16 Holly Y. McGee, It Was the Wrong Time, and They Just Werent Ready: DirectAction Protest in Pine Bluff, 1963, Arkansas Historical Quarterly 66 (Spring 2007): 21, 25, 26, 31.
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the pace and scope of integration. In early 1957, William Dove again approached the school board. Without NAACP backing, he requested that the district transfer all five of his children into the Dollarway complex. School officials denied the request and said they were postponing integration to avoid the sort of turmoil that had recently arisen in Clinton, Tennessee.17 Later that year, with no sign of movement from the school board, Earnestine Dove, the daughter of William Dove, along with Corliss Smith and James E. Warfield, filed for transfers to Dollarway High School. The Dollarway school board denied their requests on three occasions. In June 1959, Dove, Warfield, and Smith filed suit against the board in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Arkansas. They were represented by NAACP attorneys Robert L. Carter of New York City and George Howard. Howard and Carter told the court that the Dollarway School District had violated the Constitution by denying the three students transfers because of race and that the district, lacking an official integration plan, was illegally maintaining a segregated school system. The board, represented by Herschel H. Friday, Jr. and Robert V. Light of Little Rock, responded that the district did not need any official plan and that under the Arkansas Pupil Enrollment Act of 1956 it had legitimately denied transfer of the students.18 This law and its successor, the Arkansas Pupil Assignment Act of 1959, gave local school boards the power to assign, reassign, and transfer a student based on any of sixteen factors laid out in the act. The sixteen criteria, none of which referred to race, ranged from logistical capacities of a school to the moral standards of the pupil. Should parents be dissatisfied with their childs placement, the law allowed them to file a transfer request, but school boards had complete discretion in reviewing such requests. If the school board denied the request, the parent could file exception to the decision, which the local school board would again review. The final step, if the exception was denied, was for the parent to take the case to state courts.19 In a brief to the court, the board maintained that exclusively white or black schools were not unconstitutional if legal machinery existed that allowed for desegregation. By following the Pupil Enrollment Act
In September 1956, 100 state troopers, 600 Tennessee national guardsmen, and seven tanks had been sent to Clinton to quell protests against the integration of twelve black students into Clinton High School. See Southern School News 3 (October 1956): 15; ibid. (February 1957): 3. 18 Friday was also an attorney for the Little Rock school board during much of that citys integration process. Southern School News 6 (July 1959): 8. 19 Pupil Assignment Act, Act 461 of the General Assembly of Arkansas (1959), effective June 11, 1959.
17

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The Dollarway School Board in 1963. Seated are Marvin McDaniels, Rob Bryant, Orville Phillips, and Joe Pierce. Standing, Lee Parham, president, and Charles Fallis, superintendent. Courtesy T. T. Tyler Thompson. of 1956 and the Arkansas Pupil Assignment Act of 1959, the district had not violated Brown II. Furthermore, Dove, Smith, and Warfield had failed to follow the procedures laid out in the acts in petitioning for a transfer. Howard countered that the boards use of both laws was illegal because it was employing them to maintain racial segregation. He also argued that the board had never informed the students of the petition process and had adopted no official plan to integrate schools. The board candidly replied, We readily admit all three facts, and cannot resist sayingso what? The short answer is that integration is not required. 20 The federal judge presiding over the case was Axel J. Beck, a South Dakota judge on temporarily assignment to the Eastern District of Arkansas. To the chagrin of white residents of Dollarway, he was, in addition to not being an Arkansan, a Republican.21 As feared, Beck rendered his decision in favor of the plaintiffs. Yet while agreeing with Howards interpretation of the boards actions, Beck felt this did not mean the Pupil
Southern School News 6 (August 1959): 12. J. W. Peltason, Fifty-Eight Lonely Men: Southern Federal Judges and School Desegregation (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), 86.
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Assignment Act was unconstitutional on its face. The Arkansas law was nearly identical to Alabamas school placement law, which the Supreme Court had upheld a year before in Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham Board of Education of Jefferson County.22 In response to the boards position regarding Brown, Beck agreed that the decision did not require integration, but it did forbid racial discrimination. Therefore, Beck decided it did not matter that the three students had not followed the correct administrative procedures to protest denial of their transfers, because the board was using the act illegally. All three were ordered to be admitted to Dollarway High School by the 1959-1960 school year as they had each met, in Becks opinion, the Pupil Assignment Acts sixteen criteria.23 Though Beck had avoided challenging Shuttlesworth, seen by one historian as the most important prosegregation legal victory since Plessy v. Ferguson, his verdict meant integrationists could challenge the intent behind school boards use of pupil placement laws across the South.24 News of the Beck decision sent segregationists in Dollarway and Arkansas into immediate action. On August 14, three hundred people met in Pine Bluff and officially formed the Dollarway Citizens Council. Prominent Arkansas segregationists were in attendance to show support. Both Margaret Jackson of Little Rocks Mothers League of Central High School and Dewey Coffman of the Capital Citizens Council spoke at the gathering. Dick Ryburn, the newly elected president of the Dollarway Citizens Council, told the crowd that he had heard Warfield and Smith had already changed their minds about attending Dollarway High School. Someone in the crowd added that Dove ought to remember dove season opens in Arkansas about the same time as the school term.25 Over the next few days, members began circulating a petition calling on Gov. Orval Faubus to use his power to prevent the integration of Dollarway. They delivered the petition, with 1,202 signatures, to Faubus in early October.26 News of the larger August 21 rally spread across the nation. Jim Johnson received letters from around the country praising his speech.27
22 Shuttlesworth et al. v. Birmingham Board of Education of Jefferson County, Alabama, 358 U.S. 101 (1958). 23 Dove v. Parham, 176 F. Supp. 242 (1959). 24 Peltason, Fifty-Eight Lonely Men, 86. 25 Arkansas Democrat, August 15, 1959. 26 Petition to Gov. Orval Faubus, series 15, box 538, folder 2, Faubus Papers. 27 Carl C. Guerrein of Erie, PA, to Jim Johnson, August 25, 1959; John R. Richardson of Dallas, TX, to Johnson, August 24, 1959; clipping of Johnsons speech from a New Jersey newspaper with handwritten praise, undated, box 31, folder 8, Justice Jim Johnson Papers, Arkansas History Commission, Little Rock.

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Leaders of the segregation movement targeted Dollarway as the place where integration would stop. Several days after the rally, reporters tried to question students registering at Dollarway High School. At the prompting of an adult observer, a group of boys began throwing stones at the reporters and calling them nigger-lovers. There were no injuries, however, and the boys eventually left.28 Tension continued to rise as the fall term approached. Several acts of vandalism occurred on the Dollarway campus. Someone painted the words all white on a sign in front of Dollarway School, and, ominously, on September 8, the original starting date of the fall term, an effigy of a black child was hanged from a tree on school grounds with a sign reading save our schools around its neck.29 Rev. Carlos Martin, a white man, lamented the situation in Dollarway. In a letter to his parishioners at St. Luke Methodist Church, Martin said the hatred he had seen in the preceding days disturbed him more than the possibility of schools being shut down. He reported for the first time hearing young children saying, I hate Niggers.30 The board had delayed the opening of Dollarway schools seventeen days as both parties in Dove v. Parham appealed Becks rulings. Howard hoped to overturn the ruling on the 1959 act, while the board sought to reverse the part allowing the three students to bypass the procedures of the act. Board attorneys reasoned that if the Pupil Assignment Act was constitutional on its face, then the parties involved should follow all its provisions, including the stipulation that disputes over school placements were under the jurisdiction of state and county courts. The courts granted a stay pending appeal of the Beck decision, and, on September 25, Dollarway schools opened on a segregated basis. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling in early October that upheld the Pupil Assignment Act as constitutional on its face but determined that the board was employing it to maintain segregation. Yet, the judges also reasoned that if the act was legal so, too, must the administrative procedures within it be legal. Precedent stated that if methods provided for in state law promised protection of a persons rights, that person must exhaust those devices before filing a complaint in federal court. Since the three students had not followed the procedures for exception set in the Pupil Assignment Act, Beck did not have the grounds to order them admitted to Dollarway School. Dove, Warfield, and Smith had to follow
New York Times, August 26, 1959. Pine Bluff Commercial, September 4, 8, 1959. 30 Pastoral letter to members of St. Luke Methodist Church by Rev. Carlos E. Martin, September 4, 1959, box 9, folder 88, Arkansas Council on Human Relations Papers, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville.
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the acts procedures for appeal. Once they did so, they could return to district court with any complaints they might yet have.31 Arkansas attorney general Bruce Bennett praised the decision as a guide both to other Arkansas school districts and all the South.32 With violence seemingly a possibility, the Eighth Circuits decision was a source of relief for a number of different groups. A New York Times article reported that unnamed officials in the U.S. Department of Justice had welcomed the stay of Becks decision. The officials believed that Governor Faubus might use the integration of Dollarway to regain prestige lost at Little Rock. Immediate integration, they felt, was not worth the risk of another episode like Central High. The article said NAACP officials had also been leery of forcing integration in such a recalcitrant part of the country after the backlash in Little Rock.33 A subsequent article in the Times similarly reported that many moderate integrationists had been privately relieved, feeling the Eighth Circuit had prevented a second Little Rock.34 For its part, the white community in Dollarway was overjoyed. Local Citizens Council president Dick Ryburn announced, Well continue to have a Citizens Councilmore now than ever.35 The news of the appeal may have prevented violence, but segregationist agitation continued in Dollarway. The Citizens Council sent out a harsh rebuttal to Reverend Martin, accusing him of being a hypocrite and a race-mixer.36 Its attack proved effective. Martin was harassed, and St. Luke saw its membership decline, forcing a $300 cut in his salary.37 There was some organized protest as well. For a week, about sixty segregationists sat in at a Pine Bluff restaurant in shifts, ordering only coffee until the owner was forced to appease them by firing his two black employees.38 Undeterred, Dove, Warfield, and Smith followed the acts procedures in appealing their school assignment. In early October, the three students, their parents, and attorneys met with the board at the Dollarway administration building in a closed meeting. The board subjected the students to a four-hour physical exam followed by a six-hour intelligence test. During the hearing, about two hundred protesters gathered outside and twice attempted to disrupt the proceedings by cutting power to the building, deParham v. Dove, 271 F.2d 132 (1959). Southern School News 6 (October 1959): 15. 33 New York Times, September 22, 1959. 34 Ibid., September 27, 1959. 35 Pine Bluff Commercial, September 22, 1959. 36 Rebuttal to Rev. Martin from the Dollarway Citizens Council, October 20, 1959, box 9, folder 88, Arkansas Council on Human Relations Papers. 37 Nat H. Griswold to Rev. Dudley Ward, October 29, 1959, ibid. 38 Southern School News 6 (November 1959): 6-7.
32 31

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spite the presence of Sheriff Harold Norton and two deputies. The crowd grew as more people left the nearby high school football game. After the hearing, the crowd threw stones at the three students and their parents as they left the building.39 On November 3, the board announced it had found the exceptions filed by Dove, Smith, and Warfield to be insufficient for transfer. Howard responded by taking the case back to court.40 Outside the courts, a Dollarway school board seat opened for election in early December 1959. Charles Knott, a carpenter who had been the boards only black member from 1950 until 1955, when he had lost his seat after the Brown decision, ran to fill the vacancy. Although there were only forty-five more white voters than black in Dollarway at the time, Knott lost the election 979-408. It was reported only nine people voting at a box in the white neighborhood went for Knott.41 While the results might be explained by something as mundane as apathy, it is possible that voter intimidation occurred but went unreported. The next round of court hearings in Dove v. Parham also began in December 1959. An Arkansas native, Judge J. Smith Henley, had replaced Beck. Howard argued that the three students had complied with the procedures of the Pupil Assignment Act and met all sixteen criteria, but that the board denied them transfer on grounds of race. He maintained that the board continued to use the act to preserve unconstitutional discrimination in the schools. Howard also challenged the legality of the act on the grounds that, to enter white schools, black children had to undergo testing of a sort that white students never had to face. The board brought in psychologist John E. Peters from the University of Arkansas Medical School to support it in finding the three students unqualified. Howard responded with his own expert from Arkansas AM&N, David A. Talbot, who administered various intelligence and reading comprehension tests to the three students to prove they were capable of attending Dollarway High School. The board argued that considering the race of a student, in addition to the sixteen criteria, in its review of transfer requests was legitimate so long as race was not the sole deciding factor. It also contended that although the appeals decision had authorized appeals to district court once administrative procedures failed, the Pupil Assignment Act required the students to go through state courts first in protesting their cases.42 After considering the various arguments, Henley issued a three-part decision on February 19, 1960. It stated that since this case involved con39 40

Pine Bluff Commercial, October 9, 1959. Southern School News 6 (December 1959): 3-4. 41 Ibid. (January 1960): 5-6. 42 Ibid.

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stitutional rights, it could remain in federal courts. But Henley found the Pupil Assignment Act constitutional on its face. The testing of black students desiring transfer to white schools was legal under Brown II during a transitional phase, a period that might vary from school to school. In regards to Dove, Warfield, and Smith, it was not the place of the courts to order students into schools, even though in this case it would mean that Dove, being a senior, had to finish high school at Townsend Park. Finally, despite the board having admitted in the past to using the Pupil Assignment Act to preserve segregation, Henley allowed its continued use in 19601961 and subsequent years on condition that the board submitted an affirmative plan to end segregation.43 On March 21, 1960, the Dollarway school board filed its plan for desegregation. Board members officially adopted the Pupil Assignment Act as their plan, but with the added stipulation that they would only consider transfer requests for students entering the first grade. The board would refuse all higher level transfers unless it felt special circumstances applied. The board said this policy would be in effect for the 1960-1961 term, and that in compliance with Henleys February decision it would notify all parents of their childrens placement in May. Assignments followed, with students placed in the schools they had attended during the 1959-1960 year.44 Howard filed another suit the following month. He argued that the current plan did not meet the requirements of being an affirmative plan to end segregation and that the board had not provided any sort of timetable or specific goal. Henley disagreed. He found the boards plan to be fair and sufficiently in compliance with Brown. The policy against lateral transfers at higher grades would leave black students in second grade or above stuck at Townsend Park, but it would also benefit those who transferred to Dollarway School by keeping them there. Henley admitted the board could employ its current plan in a discriminatory manner, but he felt it deserved a chance to show the plan could work. He approved it for use in the fall of 1960. But he warned if a substantial number of black students applied for Dollarway but the number accepted was unreasonably low, the Court might find it hard to believe that unlawful and unreasonable racial discrimination was not being practiced.45 Henley thus demonstrated his reluctance to challenge the Pupil Assignment Act, even when the school board employing it had openly admitted they considered students race when reviewing transfer requests.
43 44

Dove v. Parham, 181 F. Supp. 504 (1960). Southern School News 6 (April 1960): 6. 45 Dove v. Parham, 183 F. Supp. 389 (1960).

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Though Earnestine Dove was set to graduate from high school in May, Howard continued to press the case, filing an appeal to Henleys April ruling. The appeal was scheduled for June 27. In the meantime, school registration for first graders had come. Three black children registered for Dollarway Elementary on May 5. That morning, six-year-olds Andrew Howard, who was George Howards nephew, and Linda D. Houston arrived with their mothers at the crowded school. While the kids and their mothers were inside, a group of white men beat seventy-five-year-old Ivey Anderson, who had driven the Howards and Houstons, as he waited in his car outside the building. Anderson was able to get away before being seriously injured. George Howard reported the incident to the police. Sheriff Harold Norton and two deputies arrived at Dollarway School some time later and dispersed the crowds so the two students and their mothers could leave.46 That afternoon, Delores York and her father John registered at Dollarway without incident. As news of the three students spread through Dollarway and Pine Bluff, segregationists got upset. Houston and Yorks fathers reported harassment by members of the Citizens Council at the Arkansas Pallet Company where both men worked.47 The second appeals trial began the next month in St. Louis, away from the rising anger in Dollarway. Howard had appealed Henleys refusal to order Dove, Warfield, and Smiths transfer to Dollarway High and his approval of the boards desegregation plan. The board entered its own appeal to the decision that had allowed Howard to bypass the Pupil Assignment Acts stipulations regarding court appeals. Chief Judge Harvey M. Johnsen, the same judge who ruled on the 1959 appeal, affirmed Henleys ruling that cases involving the violation of an individuals constitutional rights could go straight to federal courts. However, while the court found the boards current plan to desegregate an insufficient and unlawful application of the Pupil Assignment Act, it did not see this as evidence that the board was not acting in reasonable faith. The basis for this decision was two-fold. The board could no longer use the criteria of the placement law or educational theories to determine what was best for a student in regard to which school he or she attendeda decision the court felt that parents should make. Secondly, it could not use the Pupil Assignment Act to maintain segregated schools.48 If, in the wake of Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, federal judges in Arkansas and elsewhere evidenced little desire to challenge the constitutionality of pupil placement laws, both the appellate court and the most recent
46 47

Arkansas Democrat, May 5, 1960. Southern School News 6 (June 1960): 6. 48 Dove v. Parham, 282 F.2d 256 (1960).

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Henley rulings had questioned the lawfulness of the Dollarway boards application of the Pupil Assignment Act. A consensus seems to have developed that the board had to do something to avoid any further federal intervention. On August 16, Lee Parham, Dollarway district superintendent Charles L. Fallis, Sheriff Norton, and other school officials met with Governor Faubus in Little Rock. They did not officially disclose the subject of this meeting, but the public certainly knew that discussions had occurred. A newsletter from the Pine Bluff Sons of Liberty claimed this meeting involved a Zionist plan to integrate.49 While the explanation of motive was a bit extreme, their guess about the meetings intent was probably not very far off. Two days later, Parham announced that the board, proceeding in good faith in accordance with the legal advice of its attorneys, had admitted Delores York to the first grade at Dollarway Elementary along with ninety white students. Parham asked the community to continue to support the board and remember, We have not given in; we have conceded a battle to win a war.50 L. D. Poynter, the president of the Pine Bluff Citizens Council and a prominent figure in segregationist circles, publicly backed the Dollarway boards decision and asked that there be no protest.51 Poynter gave no specific reason for the councils support. With Faubus, school officials, and the sheriff behind the decision, local segregationists had few other options beyond resorting to extreme tactics. The board rejected both Houston and Howards applications, and rumor in the community had it that Delores York had only been accepted because she had tested into the top 10 percent of her class and there was no plausible reason to block her transfer other than race.52 Reactions in the white community varied. Some white parents threatened to withdraw their children from Dollarway. One mother said she was afraid if her daughter started first grade in an integrated class, she might not develop what the woman considered to be proper notions of race relations. Other parents seemed to resign themselves to integration. A local man told reporters, Its awful hard to be a brave fighter when your opponent is a six-year old girl.53 A short-lived rumor said the local Citizens Council would push for the recall of the entire board, but a council official declared otherwise.54 Perhaps reluctant to draw national
49

Sons of Liberty, The Dollarway Situation, August 16 Meeting at Gov. Mansion, series 15, box 538, folder 1, Faubus Papers. 50 Arkansas Democrat, August 18, 1960. 51 Pine Bluff Commercial, September 7, 1960. 52 Southern School News 7 (September 1960): 10. 53 Good No-News, Time, September 19, 1960, p. 54. 54 Arkansas Democrat, August 19, 1960.

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attention, most of Dollarways white community accepted the news quietly, in contrast to their reactions one year earlier to the Beck ruling. Dollarway remained quiet as integration approached. In Pine Bluff, Arkansas AM&N students began to organize sit-ins to desegregate public accommodations, but faculty strongly discouraged this, and the attempt resulted in the expulsion of three students.55 Rumors circulated that the local Ku Klux Klan had scheduled a meeting but for some reason called it off. Regardless, local authorities took precautions against violence. Eleven state troopers in addition to Sheriff Nortons deputies would be on site for the start of first grade, though authorities insisted, we are not expecting trouble. Officials did not request the assistance of U.S. marshals or FBI agents stationed in Pine Bluff.56 By accepting token integration, Dollarways board and Citizens Council had succeeded in keeping federal agencies out of the picture. When the day finally came, integration went smoothly. On the morning of September 7, 1960, six-year-old Delores York became the first African-American student to enter the previously all-white Dollarway Elementary School. Her father dropped her off at the side entrance of the school at 8:25 A.M., and fifteen minutes later school board president Parham announced that York was safely in class.57 About a week earlier, Gov. Orval Faubus had suggested a strong possibility of trouble if Dollarway integrated.58 The only sign of discontent, however, was a group of twenty or so men and women lurking in cars near the school. The school kept press access to a minimum. It allowed only six reporters from the Associated Press, United Press International, and the Pine Bluff Commercial to gather in a small roped-off area on school grounds. Sheriff Norton told the rest to leave. You wont get anything here because we dont intend to have a story.59 Delores York said her day went fine. The highlights included coloring horses and eating lunch with her classmates, some of whom had even greeted her.60 The next day, Delores arrived for school about thirty minutes early, but Parham was quick to assure reporters that this was not a sign of trouble.61 Otherwise, the reporters outside Dollarway Elementary had little to write about. The remainder of Deloress time at Dollarway Elementary seems to have passed as peacefully as her first day.
55 56

McGee, It Was the Wrong Time, 21. Arkansas Democrat, September 6, 1960. 57 Ibid., September 7, 1960. 58 Prophecy by Faubus, Time, August 29, 1960, p. 17. 59 Arkansas Democrat, September 7, 1960. 60 Good No-News, 54. 61 Arkansas Democrat, September 8, 1960.

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The Dollarway Student Council in 1962. Courtesy T. T. Tyler Thompson. Though there appeared to have been no overt signs of trouble in the school, Yorks father became a target of harassment, and he was soon fired from his job at Arkansas Pallet Company, where he had worked for twelve years.62 John York was then arrested at a gas station on September 10, on charges of drunk driving, reckless driving, and disturbing the peace, though he maintained he was helping push a friends car to the station with his truck.63 York received a fine, went to jail for three days, and had his license suspended for thirty days.64 On November 19, 1960, the board presented a new integration plan to the district court. This plan was essentially the same as the one that had failed to meet approval in appeals court, except it allowed for transfers into the second grade, and it promised that no first-grade transfers would be blocked on purely racial grounds. With nothing helpful to his high-schoolage clients and no real progress toward integration provided in the new plan, Howard saw fit to file an objection ten days later.65 At the next hearing in December, Henley finally agreed the plan was insufficient. Rather than giving a definitive ruling, he, somewhat sarcastically, ordered the
62 63

Good No-News, 54. Southern School News 7 (October 1960): 11. 64 Ibid. (November 1960): 13. 65 Ibid. (December 1960): 11.

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board to beef up the plan so that it might survive at least two or three rounds of litigation.66 The board filed its third, very similar, plan on March 13, 1961. It still used the Pupil Assignment Act of 1959 as the primary procedure to judge school transfers and kept the boards first-graders-only policy. The only novel element was that students were only required to achieve average scores on the California Short-form Test of Mental Maturity and the Metropolitan Readiness Test, rather than top marks.67 Howard objected to the new plan, saying that it did nothing for his high-school-age clients, Corliss Smith and James Warfield, or students in higher grade levels.68 The litigation continued through April. By May 12, Henley had rendered his verdict. Despite Howards objections, Henley gave tentative approval for the third plans use in the 1961-1962 school year on the condition that the board return with some evidence of progress by July.69 As school registrations loomed, Henley reminded the public that he would not tolerate any violence.70 When the May 30-31 school registration had been completed, six black children had applied to Dollarway Elementary. Samuel W. Cato and Benny R. York, the brother of Delores, registered for first grade. Despite the policy against higher grade transfers, the other four students were lateral transfers; Linda D. Houston and Michael Edwards to the second grade, Charles Dove to the third grade, and the eldest York child, Johnny L. York, to the fourth grade.71 As ordered, the board appeared in court on July 15 and announced its decisions. It approved the transfer of Michael Edwards because he was a good student and was well adjusted, neat, clean and industrious, and possessed certain qualities of leadership. The board rejected the other five requests, including the two first graders, citing school performance and test scores in several cases, while it found one child to be too shy and to require constant encouragement from teachers.72 By July, Howard had filed still another challenge to the boards actions on the grounds that it had taken no real steps toward desegregation and in rejecting five applicants had not shown good-faith compliance with court orders. Howard also challenged the fairness of required testing for transferees but not for the students already in Dollarway schools. He argued
66 67

Ibid. (January 1961): 12. Ibid. (April 1961): 10. 68 Ibid. (May 1961): 11. 69 Dove v. Parham, 194 F. Supp. 112 (1961). 70 Pine Bluff Commercial, May 28, 1961. 71 Southern School News 8 (July 1961): 11. 72 Dove v. Parham, 196 F. Supp. 944 (1961).

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steep testing requirements, the lack of protection against racial bias on the part of test administrators, and the boards past actions discouraged students from believing they even had a chance at acceptance into Dollarway. Henley agreed that the plan had failed for the 1961-1962 year, but he did not blame the board. A report filed during the proceedings showed that of the seventy-five first graders admitted that year to Townsend Park, twentytwo had scored average or better on the same tests all transfer students were required to take. Based on this report, Henley concluded that the Dollarway African-American community showed little interest in desegregation and said the board was not at fault for the plans failings under these circumstances. Henley also concurred with the rejection of the other four lateral transfers as the board had convinced him that the students were doing poorly in school and the faster pace at Dollarway would only hurt them academically. However, he felt that for the sake of progress the board should admit the first-grade applicants, York and Cato, and should there be so few applicants to the first grade in the future, no testing be employed.73 Benny York, Michael Edwards, and Samuel Cato joined Delores York at Dollarway School that fall with no crowds or protests.74 The 1961-1962 school year apparently passed without incident. However, the next years school registration saw a setback. No black students applied for first grade at Dollarway for the 1962-1963 year, and only one requested lateral transfer. The transfer request had come from George Howards daughter Sarah who had applied to enter the tenth grade at Dollarway High School. During a hearing before the school board on June 26, 1962, Sarah stated her wish to attend an accredited school and receive an integrated education. In addition to accreditation, Dollarway had much better facilities for its students. Townsend Park taught typing with paper keyboards, and the biology lab only had one microscope.75 The board made its refusal, based on its policy against lateral transfers at higher grades, public on July 17.76 Sarah Howard Hobbs recalled that her decision to take a lead in integration came with little family discussion. Her father, by this time head of the states NAACP chapter, had said that he needed a student who could clear all the Pupil Assignment Act hurdles without question. There had been constant objections by the board to the three high school students. Dove had insufficient test scores. The morality of Warfields home environment was in question because he had a sister with a child out of wed73 74

Ibid. Arkansas Democrat, September 5, 1961. 75 Hobbs interview. 76 Southern School News 9 (July 1962): 7, 9; ibid. (August 1962): 1, 6.

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Sarah Howards senior portrait, 1965. Courtesy T. T. Tyler Thompson. lock. Smith had passed the criteria, but at one point she stated under oath she did not want to attend Dollarway High alone. Sarah volunteered to try her hand at transferring to Dollarway. Her mother and father agreed without protest.77 By August 14, Howard, Warfield, and Smith were back in court. Earnestine Dove remained on the case file name but had already graduated from Townsend Park High School. This time Howard requested that the court allow his daughter to intervene as a plaintiff and brought up the issue of faculty desegregation as well. With September came news of a setback.
77

Hobbs interview.

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The York family had, after the end of the previous school year, moved to Denver, Colorado, where John York had finally found regular work.78 This left Samuel Cato and Michael Edwards as the only two black students in the Dollarway schools. In a preliminary hearing on August 30, Henley concluded that the lack of students applying for transfer to Dollarway Elementary meant there was either no demand for desegregation in the district or something was preventing it. He asked both sides to return with briefs on the matter.79 Howard responded that the board had refused the transfers of his daughter and the other two students simply on the grounds of race. The board insisted that, whatever the reason for the lack of applicants for the 1962-1963 year, it did not prove the plan was bad or could not work if given time. The boards attorney, Herschel Friday, even suggested the dearth of applicants might be an elaborate ploy by the NAACP to get the boards plan thrown out by the court. After hearing both sides, Henley remained unwilling to challenge the constitutionality of the Pupil Assignment Act upon which Dollarway based its plan, though he now admitted he did not like the plan. Henley authorized the board to use it again in 1963-1964, but he did make one concession. On October 24, he ordered that the board admit Howard to the tenth grade for the spring 1963 semester because she had passed all the requirements of the act. The judge decided Smith and Warfield should finish their last year of high school at Townsend.80 Despite the controversial ruling, the last months of 1962 seem to have passed quietly, in contrast to the reaction to Becks similar decision back in 1959. The only development over the winter break was that Michael Edwards and his mother moved from the district indefinitely to care for a sick relative, leaving Samuel Cato and Sarah Howard as the only two black students enrolled at Dollarway schools.81 On January 21, 1963, Sarah Howard and Samuel Cato arrived at the Dollarway School complex to start classes. George Howard had warned his daughter that people would be angry, but that she should not retaliate. Sarahs mother asked her to read Psalms 91 every morning on the way to school.82 Although Henleys order to admit Sarah had been made public the previous October, students at Dollarway High School were given little notice she would begin classes with
78 79

Southern School News 9 (September 1962): 16. Ibid. 80 Ibid. (November 1962): 15. 81 Ibid. (January 1963): 3. 82 Hobbs interview.

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them.83 The board, having spent the winter break in court arguing for either a reversal of the order or a postponement until fall 1963, gave no indication it would follow the order. The public did not learn that Sarah was actually attending Dollarway until January 21. 84 Ann Works, a student also entering the tenth grade, remembers knowing nothing of Sarah before the start of school. Two sisters, who had recently moved into the district from out of state, were not taken aback by Sarahs arrival, though. 85 Cathy Hudman, Sarahs assigned locker mate, and her older sister Earline were friendly to Sarah on the first day. The Hudmans both helped Sarah become oriented. Cathy Hudman told reporters on the first day there was some verbal harassment, but mostly kids were surprised. Everybody wanted to see her . . . it was like they had a new toy, commented Earline. But the next day, students reacted with absolute hatredmuch worse than Monday. Earline said it seemed as if the entire school was following Sarah. 86 At Henleys request, George Howard and school officials had worked together to keep Sarah out of any risky situations. They had decided Sarah would get to school just before the first-period bell to avoid the bustle of all the other students arriving at school. After a class, she would go straight to her next one and wait in the room during the break. However, the plan overlooked lunchtime. That second day, Sarah had lunch with Cathy at an otherwise empty table. The pair had dirt, ice, and a firecracker thrown at them. After eating, both girls went to Sarahs next class, so she could wait inside as planned, but found the door locked. As they waited, a senior named Johnny Irvin surprised the two. Irvin slapped Cathy and began beating Sarah. He gave Sarah a black eye before a teacher stopped him and let the two girls into the classroom. Earline was harassed as well, and soon after lunch the Hudman girls left school.87 Violence escalated further when George Howards brother, William Howard, arrived to pick Sarah and Samuel Cato up at the end of the day. A group of students had surrounded Sarah, and, once William got both kids into the car, the group began throwing rocks. One shattered a window of the car. When William Howard got out to call the sheriff, a group of high school students approached him. The confrontation became physical, and William stabbed Johnny Irvin while trying to protect himself. Authorities
83 84

Arkansas Democrat, January 23, 1963. Pine Bluff Commercial, January 3, 21, 1963. 85 Ann Works, phone interview with author, March 30, 2009. 86 Pine Bluff Commercial, January 27, 1963. 87 Hobbs interview; Pine Bluff Commercial, January 27, 1963.

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arrested Howard on charges of carrying a concealed weapon and assault with intent to kill.88 The following day, George Howard announced Sarah and Samuel would not be returning to Dollarway unless he was given some assurance of their safety. Howard personally requested protection from Governor Faubus and U.S. Attorney Robert D. Smith.89 On that same day, school officials issued a statement saying they had recorded only one incident between Howard and another student. Otherwise customary order and discipline was maintained. They did not include the stabbing, however, as it did not occur on school grounds. Sheriff Norton echoed this statement.90 The single incident mentioned was, most likely, the attack on Sarah during lunch by Johnny Irvin, given that Superintendent Charles Fallis admitted being aware of it during William Howards assault trial.91 The Hudmans also did not return to school. Separately from Howard, Mrs. Hudman sought U.S. Attorney Smiths protection for her daughters. Sheriff Norton later advised her to send her daughters back to school, lest they face prosecution for truancy.92 Samuel Cato seemed to have escaped any incident in the elementary school during the first two days. Ann Works recalled that neither she nor her friends had any knowledge of Samuels presence beyond a rumor. Though the schools were in the same complex, the buildings were separate, and high school students in general had little contact with the elementary school kids.93 Several days passed, and Howard, Cato, and the Hudmans had not returned to school. The school board issued a letter to parents in the district, explaining that a federal court order had forced the board to let Howard into Dollarway High School against its judgment. The board insisted it did not like the decision any more than residents did, but it had to comply in order to prevent further federal intervention or interruption of the educational program. In order to keep law enforcement and administrative control in local hands, it must maintain order. The board warned that Dollarway faculty would punish anyone caught physically abusing another student and resort to expulsion if the incident was severe. With the aid of
There are several versions of the incident with slight differences. For George Howards version, see George Howard, Jr. to Orval Faubus, Western Union Telefax, January 23, 1963, series 15, box 538, folder 1, Faubus Papers; for Sheriff Nortons version, see Southern School News 9 (February 1963): 5; for the version used in William Howards federal appeal, see State of Arkansas v. William M. Howard, 218 F. Supp. 626 (1963). 89 Howard to Faubus; Southern School News 9 (February 1963): 5. 90 Southern School News 9 (February 1963): 5. 91 Arkansas Gazette, July 18, 1963. 92 Pine Bluff Commercial, January 27, 29, 1963. 93 Works interview.
88

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parents, the board said, our district can continue to avoid the strife and outside interference experienced by other communities.94 The statement convinced the Hudmans that it was safe to return to classes on January 29. However, both girls said they were verbally abused, and by noon Earline had left the school in tears after being spit on and called names. Mrs. Hudman said her daughter would not return to Dollarway to finish her senior year because of the harassment.95 Both the Justice Department and the FBI said they would watch Dollarway closely over the next few weeks, but initial information did not indicate the violation of any federal laws.96 On January 30, Samuel Cato and Sarah Howard returned to school. There were no reports of any incidents, but there was a rumor that at the end of the day two sheriffs deputies had escorted the two from the school. A spokesman for the sheriffs department denied this but did assure the press that deputies were keeping a close watch on Dollarway.97 After the first week of school, the student body seemed to have calmed down. Works remembers that the initial reaction of most students at Dollarway High had primarily been one of shock. She recalls the uneasiness continuing through the spring.98 Some further planning had gone into ensuring Sarahs safety. The board and George Howard agreed that Sarah would eat lunch alone in the room of her class after lunch. At other times, Sarah had to fend for herself. Physical education class was a problem since the gym was in a separate building. Sarah recalled one day that a boy warned her theyre waiting for you. Some of the girls at Dollarway had a habit of screaming if Sarah touched them, so she created a distraction by brushing up against two girls. Amid the noise, Sarah was able to get back to class without trouble. Going to and from assemblies was also problematic because of the crowds of students moving with little teacher supervision. Her solution was to go straight from class to the girls rest room and wait until just before the assembly started to enter and quietly find a seat in the third or fourth row.99 But Sarah was not without some support. A teacher, Mrs. Annie McClaran, took it upon herself to watch out for Sarah. At assemblies, Mrs. McClaran would make sure to sit in front of Sarah to ensure no one would bother her. In the words of Ann Works, Mrs. McClaran, known as
94 95

Pine Bluff Commercial, January 29, 1963. Ibid. 96 Arkansas Democrat, January 24, 26, 1963. 97 Pine Bluff Commercial, January 31, 1963. 98 Works interview. 99 Hobbs interview.

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Momma Mac by the students, just took Sarah on as somebody that needed her mommaing.100 There was one final incident that first year. In April, as she walked across campus late one day to meet her mother, Sarah noticed the area was cleared of students. As she came around a corner, a group of boys surrounded her, and one of them attacked her. An elementary student saw the attack and started screaming for help. Eventually, the high school principal arrived and escorted Sarah to her mothers car.101 The spring and summer of 1963 brought mixed news for Dollarway. Townsend Park High School finally received accreditation on March 20.102 But when 1963-1964 registration came, no additional black children had applied for Dollarway School. For the next two years, Howard and Cato would be the only two African Americans out of some 1,400 students on the Dollarway campus. George Howard focused his energies on his brothers defense through spring and into summer. The prominent civil rights attorney Wiley Branton, who had attended law school with George Howard, served as Williams defense attorney. The jury in the case was entirely white, but Brantons strategy of documenting Irvins history of violence left the jury deadlocked, forcing the judge to declare a hung jury. In the same months, voters narrowly elected a member of the African-American community, Arkansas AM&N professor Arthur H. Miller, to the Dollarway school board.103 Of the twenty-one desegregated districts in Arkansas, Dollarway, despite having begun integration four years earlier, had the second lowest percentage of black students in previously all-white schools by 1964.104 Many of these desegregated districts were located in the western half of the state. Only Dollarway and Pine Bluff were in parts of Arkansas with black populations over thirty percent.105 With only two black students in otherwise white schools, the Dollarway school district was proving the effectiveness of minimal compliance. Sarah Howards second year at Dollarway began without incident. After that first year, parents and students seemed to realize that one student in the otherwise white high school was not going to make for radical change. Johnny Irvin, the apparent leader of the group of students that had
Works interview. Hobbs interview. 102 Southern School News 9 (April 1963): 9; ibid. (May 1963): 5. 103 Ibid. 11 (November 1964): 5. 104 Ibid. (September 1964): 2. 105 Bureau of Census, Advance Reports: General Population Characteristics, Arkansas, March 29, 1961 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce), www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/ 15611114.pdf (accessed August 28, 2009).
101 100

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tormented Sarah, had graduated that summer. The rest of the students, while not kind, were indifferent to her presence. Sarah, by being quiet, well-mannered, and an excellent student, gave others no excuse to treat her badly.106 In biology class, Sarah remembers, she had a functional relationship with her lab partner. Though no one had said she could not take part in extracurricular activities, the Howards decided not to take the risk of Sarah spending more time than necessary at school. She made no friends at Dollarway, and some distance grew between Sarah and old friends at Townsend Park. Sarahs biggest disappointment was that she was not included in the high school honors society despite being in the top three of her graduating class.107 The next significant development in Dollarway integration came with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With the possibility of schools that remained segregated losing federal funding, pupil placement laws became less appealing. Little Rock schools abandoned the Pupil Assignment Act as its integration plan on the advice of Herschel Friday, the same attorney who represented Dollarway. Three days later, on April 26, 1965, Superintendent Fallis announced that Dollarway too had scrapped the act and had submitted a new, undisclosed integration plan one month earlier for the 1965-1966 year.108 Like Little Rock and other schools across the South, Dollarway adopted a freedom of choice plan as its integration policy for the 19651966 school year. Unlike in Little Rock, the plan went unchallenged in Dollarway over the next three years. Under this policy, Townsend Park and Dollarway school assignments from previous years stayed the same, but a student could choose to transfer to any school in the district without restriction. The board would no longer prevent integration, but it had placed the burden on students and their parents to take the initiative. Following Sarah Howards graduation in 1965, future National Football League player Roscoe Word entered the eighth grade at Dollarway Junior High School. During his sophomore through senior years, Word was a starting wide receiver and defensive end on the Dollarway High School football team. Of his years on the team, he recalled, I think my coaches were as fair as they could be but it was difficult at times.109 By fall of 1968, under the freedom of choice plan, Dollarway School had sixty-four black students in grades one through twelve out of 1,328 students, and four
Works interview. Hobbs interview. 108 Southern School News 11 (May 1965): 11. 109 Darren Ivy, Untold Stories: Black Sports Heroes before Integration (Little Rock: Wehco Publishing, 2002), 74.
107 106

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black faculty members out of forty-eight. Pinecrest Elementary had one black student and one black teacher out of 323 and 11, respectively. At Townsend Park schools, there were seven white teachers out of fifty-nine, but the student body of 1,679 remained entirely African-American.110 These numbers show the effectiveness of the freedom of choice plan in maintaining racial separation in Dollarway. In early April 1968, three separate cases from Arkansas, Virginia, and Tennessee went before the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 27, the Court handed down a ruling that found the freedom of choice plans in their various incarnations to be unconstitutional. The Court stated that it was the responsibility of the school districts to establish a school system with no racially identifiable schools.111 Almost immediately, Howard brought suit against the Dollarway school board on behalf of Samuel Cato seeking full integration. In light of the recent ruling, Henley ordered the Dollarway board to submit a new integration plan to eliminate its dual school systems no later than December 1, 1968, and for the new plan to go into effect for the 1969-1970 year. The board requested a time extension until the summer of 1969 to submit a new plan, but Henley had finally grown weary of its delaying. He refused a stay, noting that in the preceding nine years the board had never managed to submit a plan that had not been followed by six months of litigation.112 Howard appealed the ruling to get the courts to order the establishment of a unitary school system by the spring term of 1969, but the appeal failed, and Henleys July 25 ruling stood.113 The board complied with Henleys order and submitted a new plan that established a zone system for the Dollarway and Townsend schools. Zones 1 and 3 would be composed of that part of the district west of the Dollarway Road, and Zones 2 and 4 would be on the east side. Zone 5 was a small block in the southwest portion of the district proper. The plan assigned students residing in Zones 1 and 3 to Dollarway schools, while students in Zones 2 and 4 went to Townsend. Students in Zone 5 and the Hardin area were assigned to Pinecrest for grades one through five and from sixth grade onwards to the Dollarway schools. The rationale behind the zoning assignments was that it would be dangerous for students to have to walk
No other ethnic groups were recorded present in Dollarway schools at this time. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office for Civil Rights, Directory of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools in Selected Districts, Enrollment by Racial/ Ethnic Group (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968), 57. 111 Green et al. v. County School Board of New Kent County et al., 391 U.S. 430 (1968); Monroe et al. v. Board of Commissioners of the City of Jackson et al., 391 U.S. 450 (1968); Raney et al. v. Board of Education of the Gould School District et al., 391 U.S. 433 (1968). 112 Cato v. Parham, 293 F. Supp. 1375 (1968). 113 Cato v. Parham, 403 F.2d 12 (1968).
110

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across the highway to get to school. However, Henley was fully aware of Dollarways demographics. The community west of the highway was predominantly white and the community on the east side was predominantly black. Thus, under this plan the schools would look almost exactly as they had under the freedom of choice system. Henley therefore found the plan to be insufficient and ordered a new one presented by May 1, 1969, to go into effect for the 1969-1970 year.114 In its next plan, submitted on April 29, 1969, the board partially abandoned the previous zoning plan, and conceded complete integration of grades ten through twelve. All students in the district tenth grade and up would attend Dollarway High School. However, for students in grades one through nine the previous plans attendance zones would be in effect. The only difference was that this plan moved the dividing line several hundred yards to the east, from the Dollarway Road to the Missouri Pacific tracks. All students in grades one through nine living west of the tracks would attend Dollarway-Pinecrest schools and those living east of the track would attend Townsend Park Schools. The plan included two additional measures. Students living between the highway and the railroad tracks could choose to attend either Townsend Park or Dollarway-Pinecrest. Secondly, any student assigned to a school where his race was in the majority could choose to transfer to a school where his race was in the minority. The first measure was added because moving the dividing line to the railway tracks would have sent about two hundred white students to Townsend Park Elementary had there not been a dual attendance zone. The second measure prevented any complaints from parents who might follow in the footsteps of the Howards, the Doves, and others in pushing for integration. In regards to school faculty and staff, the boards plan said at least 25 percent of the Dollarway-Pinecrest school faculty would be black and the same percentage would be white at Townsend Park Elementary. It made no mention of high school faculty. Finally, the plan promised to extend the unitary school system to include grades seven through nine for 1970-1971 and subsequent years, but all elementary schools would remain under the zoning system. Henley accepted the plan but added a few changes. First, he ordered that no less than two hundred white students must attend Townsend Park Elementary so that it would be at least 23 percent white, balancing the number of black students placed in Dollarway-Pinecrest by the zoning assignment. Secondly, the board must work out a plan to fully integrate the elementary grades by the 1972-1973 school year.115

114 115

Cato v. Parham, No. 297 F. Supp. 403 (1969). Cato v. Parham, No. 302 F. Supp. 129 (1969).

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This time, white residents of the district did not uniformly support the boards plan. Citizens of the discontiguous Hardin area responded by circulating petitions to revive the old Hardin school district. Prior to 1948, Hardin had been a separate district offering classes up to the ninth grade, with the areas high school students sent to neighboring districts on a tuition basis. In 1946, fire destroyed one of the two buildings in the Hardin school complex, and two years later Dollarway annexed the district. Under the Dollarway administration, the building still standing in Hardin was used as an elementary school until 1964, when it was closed and all Hardin students were required to travel to Dollarway schools. At the time of Cato v. Parham, the Hardin area was sending about 270 students to Dollarway, only five of whom were black. Hardin residents voted in favor of the separation measure on September 11, 1969. The Jefferson County Board of Education began reallocating Dollarway district funds and assets to reestablish the Hardin district.116 Though Dollarway residents saw the secession movement as a ploy to avoid integration, Hardins relationship with Dollarway had soured by the late 1960s for a number of reasons. Since accepting Hardin into the district, the board had been adamant in refusing to appoint a Hardin resident to fill any seats made vacant by a resignation. Residents of Hardin were also upset with the closure of Hardin Elementary.117 The Hardin issue precipitated some organized protest by students in the fall of 1969. That September, eight white students at the recently renamed Dollarway Junior High walked out of classes. The leader of the group, who was a resident of Hardin, told the press, Hardin people wouldnt be going to that school and the Dollarway people didnt want to be going to that school with Negroes.118 Some African-American students seem to have been unhappy with the situation at Dollarway Junior High as well. The next month, a group of fourteen black picketers marched outside of the school. The group was a mixture of AM&N students and former Dollarway pupils. Their signs carried messages such as Stop Teacher Brutality, and a school official told the press that he recognized one of the picketers as a student who had been expelled from the junior high several weeks before for profanity. Though the demonstration was brief, parents pulled many white students and a small number of black students from classes.119
116 Burleson v. County Board of Election Commissioners of Jefferson County, 308 F. Supp. 352 (1970). 117 Pine Bluff Commercial, September 10, 1969. 118 Ibid., September 13, 1969. 119 Ibid., November 5, 1969.

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Residents of Dollarway led by William Burleson filed suit against the board of education for a permanent injunction against the formation of the new Hardin districtprimarily for political reasons. If Hardin seceded, the district would lose about 7 percent of its annual revenue, and Dollarway would shift to a black voting majority. In court, they argued that Hardin residents only wanted to break from the district to escape integration. Henley agreed and said the law did not require Hardin area residents to live in the district, but, if they chose to, they must endure both the benefits and burdens until the district settled the matter of integration.120 Despite the disruptions caused by the Hardin suit, grades seven through twelve had integrated without incident in August 1969. As in 1960 when Delores York arrived at the elementary school, white parents accepted integration as an unpleasant necessity.121 At least one event that fall provided those on both sides of Dollarways color line a respite from racial tensions. Dollarway High Schools integrated Cardinals began their football season with a victory over the Pine Bluff Zebras on their home field.122 In the summer of 1970, the Dollarway board went to court for a final time to avoid full integration. It had utterly failed to follow Henleys order to assign two hundred white students to Townsend Park School during the previous school year. Townsend Park only had fifteen white students enrolled out of 1,566 elementary students in the district, while Pinecrest and Dollarway were both still 70 to 80 percent white. Henley, no doubt sick of the case, ignored school semesters and ordered that by no later than October 1, 1970, Dollarway School District had to establish a completely unitary and integrated school system both in terms of students and faculties. Henley made his final ruling, stating that the death knell had sounded for segregation in Dollarway.123 The final plan went into effect for the fall term of 1970. All first and second graders were assigned to Dollarway Elementary, all third graders to Pinecrest, and all fourth through sixth graders to Townsend Park Elementary. All seventh through twelfth-grade students were assigned to Dollarway Junior High and High Schools. Each schools student body was about 55 percent black, roughly equal to the African-American proportion of the districts population. Each schools faculty more or less reflected the make-up of its student body with the total in the district of fifty-seven black
120 Burleson v. County Board of Election Commissioners of Jefferson County, 308 F. Supp. 352 (1970). 121 Pine Bluff Commercial, August 29, 1969. 122 Thompson, Dollarways Pathways, 13. 123 Cato v. Parham, 316 F. Supp. 678 (1970).

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teachers and fifty-seven white.124 This did not solve all the districts problems, however, as it had not yet settled the matter of faculty equality. Judge Henleys court called the board into the courtroom once more five years later for refusing to appoint a senior African-American coach as head football coach and athletic director for the district.125 But eleven years of litigation had finally brought about the full integration of Dollarway schools. Prominent segregationist leaders had seen Dollarway as a site for resistance. Yet protest from the Citizens Council or any other pro-segregation organization quickly dissipated. The school board managed to keep much of the controversy confined to the courts. No landmark cases arose from Dollarway, but the results proved that desegregation in southeastern Arkansas was possible, though it might be initially narrowed and slowed by minimum compliance. Over the long term, however, integrations legal triumph would be vitiated by a white flight that resurrected racial separation. In 2007, Dollarway schools student body was 92 percent black, though African Americans represented less than 70 percent of Jefferson Countys population.126

124 U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office for Civil Rights, Directory of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools in Selected Districts, Enrollment and Staff by Racial/Ethnic Group (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970), 53. 125 Cross v. Board of Education of the Dollarway Arkansas School District, et al., 395 F. Supp. 537 (1975). 126 School Data Direct, Dollarway School District, www.schooldatadirect.org (accessed August 28, 2009).

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