School Vouchers

The 1959 Arkansas General Assembly was the third in three years to pass a raft of pro-segregation measures. Act 236 allowed the parents of a student to directly petition the State Board of Education for a grant to cover the cost of sending their child to a segregated school in another school district or to a private school—essentially, a prototype school voucher system. The parents’ only burden of proof was to sign an affidavit stating that attending a segregated school would be better for their child than attending an integrated school. This allowed parents to escape school desegregation by transferring students from an integrated school district into a segregated district. The courts eventually ruled the act unconstitutional.