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The Tossed Year #3

Sixty years ago this month, Little Rock voters decided by an almost 3-to-1 margin to keep closed all of the city’s public high schools rather than desegregate them. Gov. Orval Faubus pressured the Little Rock school board to lease the public schools to a private corporation. The courts blocked the move. Faubus then used state money to assist the private corporation in purchasing private buildings to use as schools. The private corporation eventually went broke. That year, white students were forced to attend privately funded schools, schools in other Arkansas districts, schools out of state, or to take correspondence classes through the University of Arkansas. Black students, with fewer resources to fall back on, were by far the hardest hit. Horace Mann High School offered correspondence classes for them.