As American schoolchildren have returned to schools over the last month, they’ve confronted a very different educational landscape than the one they found in classrooms last September. The second Trump Administration has not minced words regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in education. Along with gutting the Department of Education, attacking college accreditors, and requiring new standards for K-12 school discipline, President Donald Trump has taken steps toward dismantling the fruits of decades of civil rights activism in education.
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Trump and his allies argue that the need for DEI has long passed. In their assessments, desegregation and the passage of time have cured all of America’s racial ills.
Yet, this argument rests on an ahistorical understanding of the civil rights movement — one in which its work is complete. This narrative neglects the systemic nature of discrimination, Black lived experiences, and ongoing activism.
That’s especially true when it comes to education. One historical episode in particular exposes the problems with seeing the civil rights movement’s mission as complete: the 1957 desegregation of Central High School by the “Little Rock Nine.” The triumphant story often taught in American schools sees the integration of Central High as an end point — but the story actually continued for another six decades. By stopping in 1957, the retelling falsely relegates educational inequality to the past. While the popular story highlights a federal civil rights victory, a more comprehensive examination reveals the triumph of white resistance, the failures of sustained federal oversight, and the longer history of Black student courage and activism.
The traditional narrative of the Little Rock Desegregation Crisis goes something like this: Nine Black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, attempted to desegregate Central High School in accordance with the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling and the district’s own desegregation plan. Violent mobs confronted the students on the first day of school, and initially, the Arkansas National Guard blocked them from entering the building under orders from segregationist Governor Orval Faubus. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10730 and sent in the 101st Airborne to enforce desegregation and usher the students into Central High.
This story of the Little Rock Nine is familiar to American school children. Textbooks often depict the final snapshot of the 101st Airborne paratroopers leading students up the school steps in 1957 as the finale to the desegregation crisis in Little Rock. It is a celebratory narrative where federal intervention supported Black students and assisted in successful desegregation.
There’s just one problem: systemic failures and inequality continued to plague education in America — including in Little Rock — well beyond 1957.
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Even at Central High School, the hostility and institutional failures remained ongoing. After troops left the city, the nine students who integrated Central High — Melba Pattillo Beals, Minnijean Brown-Trickey, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Terrence Roberts, Thelma Mothershed, and Jefferson Thomas — endured daily verbal and physical abuse. Brown-Trickey was eventually suspended for standing up to her tormentors, while her white aggressors went unpunished. Most teachers and administrators looked the other way.
The following year, in defiance of federal desegregation orders, Faubus shut down all Little Rock high schools — denying thousands of students of all races access to a free and public education. The goal was clear: halt desegregation at any cost.
In 1959, after a year of pressure from the Women’s Emergency Committee to Reopen Our Schools and a federal court order, Faubus relented and Little Rock’s public high schools reopened. But it didn’t end segregation. Instead, the practice morphed and changed form.
Middle-class white families moved to the suburbs or enrolled their children in private academies. White parents also had a new mechanism to evade desegregation: school choice. In 1965, a federal court approved Little Rock’s “freedom of choice” plan that allowed parents to choose which specific school in the district their children would attend. The policy faced opposition from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as offering “neither freedom nor choice” for Black students, who faced local intimidation and feared enrolling in traditionally white schools.
Meanwhile, private academies popped up around the city, particularly in north and west Little Rock. These schools reinforced both racial and class divides by creating exclusive education spaces inaccessible to many Black and low-income students. Economic inequality coupled with racial discrimination in admissions meant most Black families remained systematically excluded from private schools. There was another barrier to integration — students who lived in West Little Rock attended schools in the predominantly white Pulaski County Special School District. These neighborhoods grew rapidly as families sought to avoid integrated schools.
As a result, Little Rock public schools had vastly uneven racial makeups from building to building.
Following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, segregationists sought alternative ways to combat school desegregation. The solution for some was the “segregation academy” movement that created new private schools for white children. In Little Rock, schools like the North Side Academy opened as part of this segregation academy movement. By 1973, over 6,000 students attended these academies.
This made it harder for Little Rock School District to satisfy federal court desegregation mandates. They already had a tough task because neighborhoods were racially segregated, the traditional practice of drawing school attendance zones geographically complicated most desegregation plans. In 1967, the district had hired consultants from the University of Oregon to develop a plan aimed at overcoming the challenges of attendance zones and white flight. Known as the “Oregon Plan,” it proposed building new schools throughout the district and replacing traditional attendance zones with large educational park complexes, each of which would reserve 25% of their enrollment for Black students.
This plan ran into fierce resistance from white families who had recently moved their children to west Little Rock. They formed the Education First Committee to ardently oppose the plan and worked to elect sympathetic school board members. It worked. In the September 1967 school board election, voters replaced two incumbent members with candidates who were outspoken opponents of the Oregon Plan. With a majority on the school board opposed, the Oregon Plan was abandoned.
The combination of private academies, segregated neighborhoods, and white flight led to an estimated 50% reduction in the number of white students enrolled in Little Rock School District in the 1970s.
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The intricate connection between housing and school segregation remained an obstacle to desegregation throughout the decade. The Little Rock Housing Authority (LRHA) helped ensure residential segregation, which fueled continued school segregation.
Black families responded with litigation, which produced some successes. In 1971, the district court of Eastern Arkansas ruled that LRSD had maintained an unconstitutional dual school system through neighborhood-based school assignments.
Still, unwinding this system was difficult in part because two neighboring districts, the Pulaski County Special School District and the North Little Rock School District, cooperated with one another to ensure their districts would remain majority white. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, both districts served as welcoming destinations for white families eager to leave LRSD while also resisting adoption of any substantive desegregation methods of their own.
In 1985, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court ruling that these districts and the Arkansas Board of Education were complicit in maintaining school segregation in Little Rock through policies that included “school siting” choices, an “unequal apportionment of transportation burden,” and “overclassification of black pupils in special education.”
In 1989, a federal district court ruled that the state was responsible for achieving more racial balance in the three Little Rock school districts. Over the next 25 years, Arkansas would spend over $1 billion in an effort to comply with the ruling. In 2014, a federal judge ordered the phasing out of the desegregation program.
This decision may have seemed like the end of the process that started at Central High School in 1957. Yet, the issue of segregated neighborhoods, and with them educational inequality, persisted. Black students still comprise 60% of the LRSD population, and the district continues to face financial challenges and low test scores. The lack of funding limits access to resources to support academic achievement and contributes to teacher turnover.
The story in Little Rock is far from unique. It emphasizes the long and complicated nature of desegregation as an ongoing process and still unfulfilled promise. Far from being relegated to America’s past, educational inequality is part of our present. After 60 years of white resistance and institutional complicity, as well as organized Black activism and litigation, Little Rock School District remains — like so many of America’s schools — unequal.
Heather McNamee is assistant professor of history at Washington State University. Born and raised in Arkansas, her research examines race and education activism in her home state.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.