Two new schools had been built in Little Rock: Horace Mann High for black students, and R. C. Hall High (nicknamed “Cadillac High”) for the wealthy families on the west side of the city. Only Central High, built in the 1920s and catering mostly to working-class families, however, was selected for desegregation. Armis Guthridge of the Capital Citizens’ Council, the lead spokesman for antidesegregation forces, willfully fanned the flames of poor white resentment when he announced that the rich and well-to-do were going to see to it that the “only race-mixing that is going to be done is in the
...more
