How important was Little Rock as a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement?

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One way in which the Little Rock Crisis can be considered a turning point is that some Southern cities like Raleigh and Atlanta learned that resistance to integration harmed business, and so they avoided large scale civil rights disturbances by integrating. Despite only 49 more school districts desegregating in Eisenhower’s last three years in office, compared to 712 in the three years after Brown, this small number of notable desegregations assisted civil rights and the desegregation of education campaign, by beginning the trend and provoking other Southern schools to desegregate too.

Another result of the Little Rock Crisis of 1957 which fuelled further desegregation of schools was that the scenes of violence and racism outside Central High School helping to influence moderate white opinion in support of civil rights. On September 4th 15 year old Elizabeth Eckford was greeted by a mob screaming ‘lynch her! Lynch her!’ The whole of the Little Rock Nine were continually abused, spat on, tripped. Melba Pattillo was nearly blinded by a chemical thrown in her eyes. This array of violence sparked an increase in civil rights protestors and also led to the Supreme Court decision that any law that sought to keep public schools segregated was unconstitutional in Cooper v. Aaron 1958. This new stance aided the desegregation of schools as it was now known that segregation of education was unconstitutional.

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However the Little Rock Crisis caused huge resistance from local and national authorities towards desegregation. Faubus did what Eisenhower had feared and closed many Southern schools instead of integrating and white parents sent their children to fee paying all white schools, which prevented desegregation, and with desegregation causing so much turmoil any desegregation which did occur happened at a snail’s pace. It was 1972 before all Little Rock schools were integrated. So the resistance and violence which spawned from the Little Rock Crisis slowed desegregation, by 1964, only 2-3% of black children were enrolled in desegregated schools.

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