August 26, 1954: Near the end of summer vacation, as Little Rock students prepared to return to school, there was still no clear plan to integrate the Little Rock School District (LRSD.) Three months earlier, the US Supreme Court had delivered their decision on Brown v. Board of Education. Arkansas Governor Francis Cherry was a lame duck, having lost the Democratic primary to Orval Faubus. Therefore, planning for integration in the LRSD was left primarily to LRSD Superintendent Virgil T. Blossom.
Under criticism from the NAACP, who rightly believed Blossom’s plans for integration were too vague for immediate implementation, Supt. Blossom addressed a meeting of the Little Rock School Board. He assured the board: “It’s not a policy of delay, it’s a policy of doing a good job. We already are making the honest studies you are asking for and we will be happy to talk with you when we complete these studies in 30 to 60 days.”*
Thus, the 1954-55 school year began with segregation still intact. What was supposed to be a 30- to 60-day delay for “honest studies” into the best practices of integration lasted the remainder of the school year, and continued until the “Desegregation Crisis” a few years later.
Virgil Blossom’s “policy of doing a good job” bought Orval Faubus enough time to win the 1954 gubernatorial election and implement his various strategies to avoid integration at any cost.
Now, 65 years later, Arkansas politicians are using similar rhetoric.
In April 2019, with the LRSD in its fifth year of state control, Senator Kim Hammer (R-Benton) introduced a bill that would extend state control up to four more years. He assured the Senate Education Committee that it was in the best interest of state-controlled districts to remain under state control. “It’s kind of like a child walking. You get them almost to where they can walk and then we turn them loose whether we want to or not. They fall back down again.”
This paternalistic legislation was crafted by Jeff Wood, president of the LRSD Community Advisory Board (CAB.) Although the bill ultimately failed, LRSD stakeholders have sharply criticized Wood for his effort to buy extra time in power.
On November 22, 2019, Jeff Wood explained that he “Wanted to get it right before returned. That’s all.”
In other words, “It’s not a policy of delay, it’s a policy of doing a good job.”
Incrementalist rhetoric promoting a policy of racist paternalism is alive and well in Little Rock, 65 years after Brown v. Board of Education.
*“Negro Group is Assured Little Rock Will Integrate,” Arkansas Gazette, 10 September 1954, Section A, p. 1.