Arkansas General Assembly of 1958: Anti-Sit-in Legislation

Sixty years ago this month, the Arkansas General Assembly convened a special session to pass a whole raft of prosegregation legislation. Act 17 created new punishments for disturbing the peace in a public place, an express attempt to circumvent any sit-in demonstrations in the state. Although the lunch counter sit-ins did not sweep across the South until early 1960, there had been several isolated attempts at such demonstrations in Kansas and Oklahoma in the summer of 1958. Little Rock’s first sit-ins came in March 1960 led by Philander Smith students. The cases of Frank James Lupper and Thomas B. Robinson eventually reached the US Supreme Court in December 1964, the first heard after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Court overturned the Arkansas law. I’m John Kirk, director of UA Little Rock’s Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity, and this has been an Arkansas Moment.