The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir

Description

On September 3, 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to surround Little Rock's all-white Central High School and prevent the entry of nine black students, challenging the Supreme Court's 1954 order to integrate all public schools. On September 25, Daisy Bates, an official of the NAACP in Arkansas, led the nine children into the school with the help of federal troops sent by President Eisenhower--the first time in 81 years that a president had dispatched troops to the South to protect the constitutional rights of black Americans. Bates's classic account of the Little Rock School Crisis couldn't be found on most bookstore shelves in 1962 and was banned throughout the South. In 1988, after the University of Arkansas Press reprinted it, it won an American Book Award.--From publisher description.

First Sentence

"Until a September day in 1957 Little Rock was a quite, undistinguished southern city, notable principally as being the capital of the State of Arkansas and for having won several national awards for being one of the cleanest cities of its size."

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