Arkansas General Assembly of 1958: Anti-Civil Rights Legislation

Sixty years ago this month, the Arkansas General Assembly convened a special session to pass a whole raft of prosegregation legislation. Act 4 allowed the governor to close any school district that was under threat of integration. Act 5 allowed student funding to be transferred from closed public schools to private schools. Act 6 allowed students to transfer from a closed public school to a private school. Act 7 gave white students the right not to be taught in a classroom with black students. Act 10 ordered all public school teachers to disclose any group memberships. Act 13 permitted the Arkansas Attorney General to search the records of groups that were deemed supporters of school desegregation. A number of other acts provided support mechanisms for all of these measures. I’m John Kirk, director of UA Little Rock’s Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity, and this has been an Arkansas Moment.