The high schools in Little Rock would be closed altogether the following school year. Rather than having troops at the school every day, Faubus decided that they just wouldn’t have school. Closing school for everyone was better than sharing the white schools with Black children, he reasoned. (Except football—that was allowed.) Other private religious schools for whites only popped up—locals called them “segregation academies.” Many of the United States’ private religious schools in the South were founded during this time, for exactly this purpose: providing a haven for white parents to protect
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