dollar way

THE ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLYVOL. LXVIII, NO. 4, WINTER 2009

We Don’t Intend to Have a Story: Integration in the Dollarway School

DistrictJOHN B. PICKHARDT

DURING THE SUMMER OF 1959, a federal judge ordered that three African-American students be admitted to the all-white Dollarway High School forthe next school year. Still smarting from their defeat in Little Rock, Arkan-sas’s leading segregationists rallied in nearby Pine Bluff to fight the courtorder. On August 21, a crowd of about 1,000 gathered with prominent seg-regationists Jim Johnson and Amis Guthridge in attendance. At thecrowd’s insistence, Johnson gave an impromptu speech, declaring, “Dol-larway is the gateway to Southeast Arkansas. . . . When Dollarway falls,we might as well pitch in the sponge.” Guthridge followed with an hour-and-twenty-minute speech that ended with him vilifying the press and fed-eral officials as outsiders interfering in Arkansas’s business. Before leav-ing the stage, Guthridge pointed out reporters from the Arkansas Gazetteand the New York Times in the crowd. The reporter from the Gazette hadhis notebook stolen by a group of men after he copied the license plates ofthose in attendance. The crowd jeered and threw rocks at the Times re-porter until she fled.1

The demonstration seemed to suggest that Dollarway, located in a partof the state with a large African-American population, might even surpassLittle Rock in massive resistance to desegregation. Arkansas attorney gen-eral Bruce Bennett tacitly acknowledged that possibility when he assuredthe press he was “optimistic that Dollarway won’t become another Little

1Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), August 22, 1959; Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock),August 22, 1959.

John B. Pickhardt is an honors graduate of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

358 ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Rock.”2 Yet when integration finally did come to the district the followingyear, segregationist groups like the Citizens’ Council offered no resistanceand even backed the Dollarway school board’s decision to proceed with to-ken integration. Dollarway High School would experience its share ofstrife, but violence emerged from within the student body rather than beingstirred up by organized segregationist groups.

By the early 1960s, the era of massive resistance to integration wasfading in Arkansas. Minimum compliance replaced massive resistance asthe preferred means of fighting integration. This method sought to usegradualism and token desegregation to limit integration while keepingcontrol of schools in local hands.3 Through ten years of court litigation, theDollarway school board practiced this technique, balancing heel-draggingwith token desegregation in order to forestall federal intervention. Theboard would work closely with local law enforcement to prevent any large-scale public violence that might provoke such attention. These methodskept the struggle over integration in Dollarway largely confined to thecourtroom.

Discussions of integration in Arkansas often end with the resolution ofthe Little Rock crisis in 1959, ignoring not only the success of minimalcompliance in that city but also the course of desegregation elsewhere inthe state. In particular, there has not been sufficient study of school inte-gration in the Arkansas Delta. The case of Dollarway, then, offers an op-portunity to fill out the story of school desegregation—and of minimumcompliance in Arkansas.

Dollarway School District Number 2 of Jefferson County is locatedjust north of Pine Bluff. At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954Brown decision, this small district included a little piece of northwest PineBluff, but for the most part consisted of the area between the city limits andthe Arkansas River to the north. The district got its name from the Dollar-way Road, which ran southeast from Pulaski County to Pine Bluff and bi-sected the urban portion of the district. The Missouri Pacific Railroad ranalmost parallel, several hundred yards to the east of the road. The districtalso included a noncontiguous area several miles to the west centered onthe Hardin community, the White Hall School District separating the twoportions. By the mid-1950s, the district operated three schools. DollarwayElementary and Hardin Elementary schools received the area’s white stu-dents, and Townsend Park Elementary received the black students. Dollar-

2Pine Bluff Commercial, September, 1, 1959.3John A. Kirk, “‘Massive Resistance and Minimum Compliance’: The Origins of the

1957 Little Rock School Crisis and the Failure of School Desegregation in the South,” inMassive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction, ed. Clive Webb(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 78.

359INTEGRATION AT DOLLARWAY

way School was located just west of the Dollarway Road, and TownsendPark was about one mile to the east, on the other side of the railroad tracks.4

The population of the district was roughly 50 percent white and 50 per-cent black in the mid-1950s. The communities were, for the most part, sep-arated by the highway and railroad. The white population lived to the westof the Dollarway Road, and the black population lived east of the railroadtracks. The detached Hardin area was almost completely white. In the pri-mary part of the district, these demographics began to tip to a black major-ity over the course of the drawn-out integration process.5

The Dollarway campus had opened in the fall of 1914 as a one-roomstructure open to the area’s white students. The area’s black elementarystudents were educated at churches and preaching seminars. For much ofits first forty years of operation, Dollarway only offered instruction up tothe eighth grade. The district sent white students wishing to continue theireducation to Pine Bluff, Watson Chapel, or White Hall High Schools,while black high school students attended Merrill High School in PineBluff. Townsend Park’s history began in 1937, when the president of Ar-

4The route of the Dollarway Road generally followed that of the later U.S. Highway65. Arkansas Chamber of Commerce map of Pine Bluff, series 15, box 538, folder 1,Orval Faubus Papers, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville.

5Cato v. Parham, 297 F. Supp. 403 (1969).

A third-grade class at Townsend Park in 1967. Courtesy T. T. TylerThompson.


kansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College (AM&N), thestate’s public institution of higher learning for African Americans, donatedone hundred acres of land to the state as a park for the area’s African-American community. The park was named in honor of William J.Townsend, the longtime principal of Merrill High School.6

After World War II, new jobs at the federal government’s Pine BluffArsenal brought an influx of families, many of whom were black, into thearea. In 1951, Dollarway received a federal grant to build a new elemen-tary school to handle the increase in students. Built adjacent to TownsendPark, it consolidated four smaller black schools in the Dollarway area. Thenext year, another grant allowed for the construction of a junior highschool on the Dollarway campus. The rapid expansion of the district con-tinued over the next few years. A third federal grant allowed for the con-struction of Townsend Park High School for black students to begin in1954. It opened the following year.7

Dollarway continued using federal money to maintain segregatedschools after Brown. At this time, the district still sent its white high schoolstudents to surrounding districts. But in 1955, Pine Bluff school officialstold Dollarway they could no longer accept its students due to overcrowd-ing and other problems. The Dollarway board decided to add a high schoolunit to the existing all-white school complex, which would open for the1957-1958 school year.8 Building continued in 1961 with the addition ofPinecrest Elementary School, which was constructed to accommodate theincreased number of students coming from Hardin.9

By fall 1957, both the Dollarway and Townsend Park complexes of-fered grades one through twelve, though Townsend Park High Schoolhad not received accreditation. For the 1957-1958 term, DollarwaySchool District had an average daily attendance of 2,060 for grades onethrough twelve, with 1,017 at the Dollarway campus and 1,043 atTownsend Park. The breakdown of high school and elementary studentsat each school was fairly similar. Dollarway School had 388 high schoolstudents and 629 elementary students, while Townsend Park enrolled331 high school students and 712 students in its elementary school. Thedistrict spent $152 per capita on Dollarway students, and $120 on theTownsend students. Dollarway High School students were the district’s

6T. T. Tyler Thompson, “Dollarway’s Pathways, the Story of the Dollarway SchoolSystem” (unpublished ms. in possession of author), 4-6.

7Ibid., 7.8Arkansas Democrat, September 18, 1959.9Thompson, “Dollarway’s Pathways,” 7.


most costly pupils at $158. Townsend High students were the least costlyat $114.10 In other words, the district was spending 28 percent less on theTownsend High students. Thus, there was little economic incentive to in-tegrate, as there was in Arkansas districts that spent considerable moneypaying tuition to other districts to educate their black high school stu-dents. Some school districts that integrated soon after Brown, like Fay-etteville, had actually been paying more per capita for black studentsthan white.11

Not everyone in Dollarway welcomed news of the construction ofTownsend Park High School. As early as 1954, William Dove, a memberof the Pine Bluff chapter of the National Association for the Advancementof Colored People (NAACP), and a small group of parents from the localblack community asked the Dollarway school board to desegregate, only

10A. W. Ford to John G. Rye, State of Arkansas Department of Education audit forDollarway School District, 1957-1958, series 15, box 538, folder 1, Faubus Papers.

11Johanna Miller Lewis, “Implementing Brown in Arkansas,” in With All DeliberateSpeed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education, ed. Brian J. Daugherity and CharlesC. Bolton (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008), 5-7, 9.

Aerial view of the Dollarway campus in 1960. Courtesy T. T. TylerThompson.


to be refused. Dove feared the new Townsend Park High School wouldlack accreditation and slow integration of Dollarway schools.12 The group,part of a small church community whose members were involved in theNAACP and civil rights movement, included the Dove, Cato, York, andSmith families. These families, and others, would play prominent roles inthe desegregation of Dollarway. The lead roles fell to George Howard, Jr.and his daughter Sarah. George Howard had received his degree in 1953from the University of Arkansas School of Law, one of the first five blackstudents to graduate from the university. After graduating, Howard begana law practice in Pine Bluff, where he also served as the head of the localNAACP. He later succeeded Daisy Bates as the president of the ArkansasState Conference of NAACP branches.13 Howard’s history of civil rightsactivism had begun during his service in World War II, when he protestedthe treatment of black sailors on his aircraft carrier, and went on to includeschool integration cases in El Dorado, Fort Smith, and West Memphis. Hewould eventually become the first African-American federal judge in Ar-kansas.14

Years after the final court case, Sarah Howard could recall no specificstrategy in pushing for desegregation in Dollarway instead of nearby PineBluff. It had just happened that the church group’s children were enrolledin the district. She called it a “family undertaking.”15 Pine Bluff might haveseemed the likelier locale. The city was distinctive in having a large andindependent African-American community anchored around ArkansasAM&N. Prominent civil rights attorneys W. H. Flowers and Wiley Bran-ton called the city home. But the presence of the college might actuallyhave slowed development of an integration movement in Pine Bluff.AM&N depended on the state legislature for funding. Because of this, theschool strongly discouraged students from openly supporting movementsthat might seem radical to legislators.16

The process of desegregating Dollarway began after the secondBrown ruling in 1955, which gave southern school boards wide latitude in

12Southern School News 1 (May 1956): 2.13John A. Kirk, Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas,

1940-1970 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 160; Judith Kilpatrick,“Desegregating the University of Arkansas School of Law: L. Clifford Davis and the SixPioneers,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 68 (Summer 2009): 137-140, 144-146, 152-154;Sarah Howard Hobbs, interview with author, March 13, 2009, Little Rock, Arkansas.

14Linda Satter, “Howard, Longtime Judge, Dies at 82,” Arkansas Democrat Gazette(Little Rock), April 22, 2007.

15Hobbs interview.16Holly Y. McGee, “‘It Was the Wrong Time, and They Just Weren’t Ready’: Direct-

Action Protest in Pine Bluff, 1963,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 66 (Spring 2007): 21,25, 26, 31.


the pace and scope of integration. In early 1957, William Dove again ap-proached the school board. Without NAACP backing, he requested thatthe district transfer all five of his children into the Dollarway complex.School officials denied the request and said they were postponing integra-tion to avoid the sort of turmoil that had recently arisen in Clinton, Ten-nessee.17 Later that year, with no sign of movement from the schoolboard, Earnestine Dove, the daughter of William Dove, along with CorlissSmith and James E. Warfield, filed for transfers to Dollarway HighSchool. The Dollarway school board denied their requests on three occa-sions. In June 1959, Dove, Warfield, and Smith filed suit against theboard in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Arkansas. They were repre-sented by NAACP attorneys Robert L. Carter of New York City andGeorge Howard.

Howard and Carter told the court that the Dollarway School Districthad violated the Constitution by denying the three students’ transfers be-cause of race and that the district, lacking an official integration plan, wasillegally maintaining a segregated school system. The board, representedby Herschel H. Friday, Jr. and Robert V. Light of Little Rock, respondedthat the district did not need any official plan and that under the ArkansasPupil Enrollment Act of 1956 it had legitimately denied transfer of the stu-dents.18 This law and its successor, the Arkansas Pupil Assignment Act of1959, gave local school boards the power to assign, reassign, and transfera student based on any of sixteen factors laid out in the act. The sixteen cri-teria, none of which referred to race, ranged from logistical capacities of aschool to the moral standards of the pupil. Should parents be dissatisfiedwith their child’s placement, the law allowed them to file a transfer re-quest, but school boards had complete discretion in reviewing such re-quests. If the school board denied the request, the parent could fileexception to the decision, which the local school board would again re-view. The final step, if the exception was denied, was for the parent to takethe case to state courts.19

In a brief to the court, the board maintained that exclusively whiteor black schools were not unconstitutional if legal machinery existedthat allowed for desegregation. By following the Pupil Enrollment Act

17In September 1956, 100 state troopers, 600 Tennessee national guardsmen, andseven tanks had been sent to Clinton to quell protests against the integration of twelveblack students into Clinton High School. See Southern School News 3 (October 1956): 15;ibid. (February 1957): 3.

18Friday was also an attorney for the Little Rock school board during much of thatcity’s integration process. Southern School News 6 (July 1959): 8.

19Pupil Assignment Act, Act 461 of the General Assembly of Arkansas (1959), effec-tive June 11, 1959.


of 1956 and the Arkansas Pupil Assignment Act of 1959, the districthad not violated Brown II. Furthermore, Dove, Smith, and Warfield hadfailed to follow the procedures laid out in the acts in petitioning for atransfer. Howard countered that the board’s use of both laws was illegalbecause it was employing them to maintain racial segregation. He alsoargued that the board had never informed the students of the petitionprocess and had adopted no official plan to integrate schools. The boardcandidly replied, “We readily admit all three facts, and cannot resistsaying—so what? The short answer is that integration is not re-quired.”20

The federal judge presiding over the case was Axel J. Beck, a SouthDakota judge on temporarily assignment to the Eastern District of Arkan-sas. To the chagrin of white residents of Dollarway, he was, in addition tonot being an Arkansan, a Republican.21 As feared, Beck rendered his deci-sion in favor of the plaintiffs. Yet while agreeing with Howard’s interpre-tation of the board’s actions, Beck felt this did not mean the Pupil

20Southern School News 6 (August 1959): 12.21J. W. Peltason, Fifty-Eight Lonely Men: Southern Federal Judges and School

Desegregation (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), 86.

The Dollarway School Board in 1963. Seated are Marvin McDaniels,Rob Bryant, Orville Phillips, and Joe Pierce. Standing, Lee Parham,president, and Charles Fallis, superintendent. Courtesy T. T. TylerThompson.


Assignment Act was unconstitutional on its face. The Arkansas law wasnearly identical to Alabama’s school placement law, which the SupremeCourt had upheld a year before in Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham Board ofEducation of Jefferson County.22 In response to the board’s position re-garding Brown, Beck agreed that the decision did not require integration,but it did forbid racial discrimination. Therefore, Beck decided it did notmatter that the three students had not followed the correct administrativeprocedures to protest denial of their transfers, because the board was usingthe act illegally. All three were ordered to be admitted to Dollarway HighSchool by the 1959-1960 school year as they had each met, in Beck’s opin-ion, the Pupil Assignment Act’s sixteen criteria.23 Though Beck hadavoided challenging Shuttlesworth, seen by one historian as “the most im-portant prosegregation legal victory since Plessy v. Ferguson,” his verdictmeant integrationists could challenge the intent behind school boards’ useof pupil placement laws across the South.24

News of the Beck decision sent segregationists in Dollarway and Ar-kansas into immediate action. On August 14, three hundred people metin Pine Bluff and officially formed the Dollarway Citizens’ Council.Prominent Arkansas segregationists were in attendance to show support.Both Margaret Jackson of Little Rock’s Mothers’ League of CentralHigh School and Dewey Coffman of the Capital Citizens’ Council spokeat the gathering. Dick Ryburn, the newly elected president of the Dollar-way Citizens’ Council, told the crowd that he had heard Warfield andSmith had already changed their minds about attending Dollarway HighSchool. Someone in the crowd added that Dove “ought to rememberdove season opens in Arkansas” about the same time as the schoolterm.25 Over the next few days, members began circulating a petitioncalling on Gov. Orval Faubus to use his power to prevent the integrationof Dollarway. They delivered the petition, with 1,202 signatures, to Fau-bus in early October.26

News of the larger August 21 rally spread across the nation. JimJohnson received letters from around the country praising his speech.27

22Shuttlesworth et al. v. Birmingham Board of Education of Jefferson County, Ala-bama, 358 U.S. 101 (1958).

23Dove v. Parham, 176 F. Supp. 242 (1959).24Peltason, Fifty-Eight Lonely Men, 86.25Arkansas Democrat, August 15, 1959.26Petition to Gov. Orval Faubus, series 15, box 538, folder 2, Faubus Papers.27Carl C. Guerrein of Erie, PA, to Jim Johnson, August 25, 1959; John R. Richardson

of Dallas, TX, to Johnson, August 24, 1959; clipping of Johnson’s speech from a New Jer-sey newspaper with handwritten praise, undated, box 31, folder 8, Justice Jim JohnsonPapers, Arkansas History Commission, Little Rock.


Leaders of the segregation movement targeted Dollarway as the placewhere integration would stop. Several days after the rally, reporters triedto question students registering at Dollarway High School. At the prompt-ing of an adult observer, a group of boys began throwing stones at the re-porters and calling them “nigger-lovers.” There were no injuries, however,and the boys eventually left.28 Tension continued to rise as the fall term ap-proached. Several acts of vandalism occurred on the Dollarway campus.Someone painted the words “all white” on a sign in front of DollarwaySchool, and, ominously, on September 8, the original starting date of thefall term, an effigy of a black child was hanged from a tree on schoolgrounds with a sign reading “save our schools” around its neck.29 Rev.Carlos Martin, a white man, lamented the situation in Dollarway. In a letterto his parishioners at St. Luke Methodist Church, Martin said the hatred hehad seen in the preceding days disturbed him more than the possibility ofschools being shut down. He reported for the first time hearing young chil-dren saying, “I hate Niggers.”30

The board had delayed the opening of Dollarway schools seventeendays as both parties in Dove v. Parham appealed Beck’s rulings. Howardhoped to overturn the ruling on the 1959 act, while the board sought to re-verse the part allowing the three students to bypass the procedures of theact. Board attorneys reasoned that if the Pupil Assignment Act was consti-tutional on its face, then the parties involved should follow all its provi-sions, including the stipulation that disputes over school placements wereunder the jurisdiction of state and county courts. The courts granted a staypending appeal of the Beck decision, and, on September 25, Dollarwayschools opened on a segregated basis.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling in earlyOctober that upheld the Pupil Assignment Act as constitutional on its facebut determined that the board was employing it to maintain segregation.Yet, the judges also reasoned that if the act was legal so, too, must the ad-ministrative procedures within it be legal. Precedent stated that if methodsprovided for in state law promised protection of a person’s rights, that per-son must exhaust those devices before filing a complaint in federal court.Since the three students had not followed the procedures for exception setin the Pupil Assignment Act, Beck did not have the grounds to order themadmitted to Dollarway School. Dove, Warfield, and Smith had to follow

28New York Times, August 26, 1959.29Pine Bluff Commercial, September 4, 8, 1959.30Pastoral letter to members of St. Luke Methodist Church by Rev. Carlos E. Martin,

September 4, 1959, box 9, folder 88, Arkansas Council on Human Relations Papers, Spe-cial Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville.


the act’s procedures for appeal. Once they did so, they could return to dis-trict court with any complaints they might yet have.31 Arkansas attorneygeneral Bruce Bennett praised the decision as a “guide both to other Ar-kansas school districts and all the South.”32

With violence seemingly a possibility, the Eighth Circuit’s decisionwas a source of relief for a number of different groups. A New York Timesarticle reported that unnamed officials in the U.S. Department of Justicehad welcomed the stay of Beck’s decision. The officials believed that Gov-ernor Faubus might use the integration of Dollarway to regain prestige lostat Little Rock. Immediate integration, they felt, was not worth the risk ofanother episode like Central High. The article said NAACP officials hadalso been leery of forcing integration in such a recalcitrant part of the coun-try after the backlash in Little Rock.33 A subsequent article in the Timessimilarly reported that many moderate integrationists had been privatelyrelieved, feeling the Eighth Circuit had prevented a second Little Rock.34

For its part, the white community in Dollarway was overjoyed. Local Cit-izens’ Council president Dick Ryburn announced, “We’ll continue to havea Citizens’ Council—more now than ever.”35

The news of the appeal may have prevented violence, but segregation-ist agitation continued in Dollarway. The Citizens’ Council sent out aharsh rebuttal to Reverend Martin, accusing him of being a hypocrite anda “race-mixer.”36 Its attack proved effective. Martin was harassed, and St.Luke saw its membership decline, forcing a $300 cut in his salary.37 Therewas some organized protest as well. For a week, about sixty segregation-ists sat in at a Pine Bluff restaurant in shifts, ordering only coffee until theowner was forced to appease them by firing his two black employees.38

Undeterred, Dove, Warfield, and Smith followed the act’s proceduresin appealing their school assignment. In early October, the three students,their parents, and attorneys met with the board at the Dollarway adminis-tration building in a closed meeting. The board subjected the students to afour-hour physical exam followed by a six-hour intelligence test. Duringthe hearing, about two hundred protesters gathered outside and twice at-tempted to disrupt the proceedings by cutting power to the building, de-

31Parham v. Dove, 271 F.2d 132 (1959).32Southern School News 6 (October 1959): 15.33New York Times, September 22, 1959.34Ibid., September 27, 1959.35Pine Bluff Commercial, September 22, 1959. 36Rebuttal to Rev. Martin from the Dollarway Citizens’ Council, October 20, 1959,

box 9, folder 88, Arkansas Council on Human Relations Papers.37Nat H. Griswold to Rev. Dudley Ward, October 29, 1959, ibid.38Southern School News 6 (November 1959): 6-7.


spite the presence of Sheriff Harold Norton and two deputies. The crowdgrew as more people left the nearby high school football game. After thehearing, the crowd threw stones at the three students and their parents asthey left the building.39 On November 3, the board announced it had foundthe exceptions filed by Dove, Smith, and Warfield to be insufficient fortransfer. Howard responded by taking the case back to court.40

Outside the courts, a Dollarway school board seat opened for electionin early December 1959. Charles Knott, a carpenter who had been theboard’s only black member from 1950 until 1955, when he had lost his seatafter the Brown decision, ran to fill the vacancy. Although there were onlyforty-five more white voters than black in Dollarway at the time, Knott lostthe election 979-408. It was reported only nine people voting at a box inthe white neighborhood went for Knott.41 While the results might be ex-plained by something as mundane as apathy, it is possible that voter intim-idation occurred but went unreported.

The next round of court hearings in Dove v. Parham also began in De-cember 1959. An Arkansas native, Judge J. Smith Henley, had replacedBeck. Howard argued that the three students had complied with the proce-dures of the Pupil Assignment Act and met all sixteen criteria, but that theboard denied them transfer on grounds of race. He maintained that theboard continued to use the act to preserve unconstitutional discriminationin the schools. Howard also challenged the legality of the act on thegrounds that, to enter white schools, black children had to undergo testingof a sort that white students never had to face. The board brought in psy-chologist John E. Peters from the University of Arkansas Medical Schoolto support it in finding the three students unqualified. Howard respondedwith his own expert from Arkansas AM&N, David A. Talbot, who admin-istered various intelligence and reading comprehension tests to the threestudents to prove they were capable of attending Dollarway High School.The board argued that considering the race of a student, in addition to thesixteen criteria, in its review of transfer requests was legitimate so long asrace was not the sole deciding factor. It also contended that although theappeals decision had authorized appeals to district court once administra-tive procedures failed, the Pupil Assignment Act required the students togo through state courts first in protesting their cases.42

After considering the various arguments, Henley issued a three-partdecision on February 19, 1960. It stated that since this case involved con-

39Pine Bluff Commercial, October 9, 1959.40Southern School News 6 (December 1959): 3-4.41Ibid. (January 1960): 5-6.42Ibid.


stitutional rights, it could remain in federal courts. But Henley found thePupil Assignment Act constitutional on its face. The testing of black stu-dents desiring transfer to white schools was legal under Brown II during atransitional phase, a period that might vary from school to school. In re-gards to Dove, Warfield, and Smith, it was not the place of the courts toorder students into schools, even though in this case it would mean thatDove, being a senior, had to finish high school at Townsend Park. Finally,despite the board having admitted in the past to using the Pupil AssignmentAct to preserve segregation, Henley allowed its continued use in 1960-1961 and subsequent years on condition that the board submitted an affir-mative plan to end segregation.43

On March 21, 1960, the Dollarway school board filed its plan for de-segregation. Board members officially adopted the Pupil Assignment Actas their plan, but with the added stipulation that they would only considertransfer requests for students entering the first grade. The board wouldrefuse all higher level transfers unless it felt special circumstances ap-plied. The board said this policy would be in effect for the 1960-1961term, and that in compliance with Henley’s February decision it wouldnotify all parents of their children’s placement in May. Assignments fol-lowed, with students placed in the schools they had attended during the1959-1960 year.44

Howard filed another suit the following month. He argued that the cur-rent plan did not meet the requirements of being an affirmative plan to endsegregation and that the board had not provided any sort of timetable orspecific goal. Henley disagreed. He found the board’s plan to be fair andsufficiently in compliance with Brown. The policy against lateral transfersat higher grades would leave black students in second grade or above stuckat Townsend Park, but it would also benefit those who transferred to Dol-larway School by keeping them there. Henley admitted the board couldemploy its current plan in a discriminatory manner, but he felt it deserveda chance to show the plan could work. He approved it for use in the fall of1960. But he warned if a “substantial” number of black students appliedfor Dollarway but the number accepted was “unreasonably” low, “theCourt might find it hard to believe that unlawful and unreasonable racialdiscrimination was not being practiced.”45 Henley thus demonstrated hisreluctance to challenge the Pupil Assignment Act, even when the schoolboard employing it had openly admitted they considered students’ racewhen reviewing transfer requests.

43Dove v. Parham, 181 F. Supp. 504 (1960). 44Southern School News 6 (April 1960): 6.45Dove v. Parham, 183 F. Supp. 389 (1960).


Though Earnestine Dove was set to graduate from high school in May,Howard continued to press the case, filing an appeal to Henley’s April rul-ing. The appeal was scheduled for June 27. In the meantime, school regis-tration for first graders had come. Three black children registered forDollarway Elementary on May 5. That morning, six-year-olds AndrewHoward, who was George Howard’s nephew, and Linda D. Houston ar-rived with their mothers at the crowded school. While the kids and theirmothers were inside, a group of white men beat seventy-five-year-old IveyAnderson, who had driven the Howards and Houstons, as he waited in hiscar outside the building. Anderson was able to get away before being seri-ously injured. George Howard reported the incident to the police. SheriffHarold Norton and two deputies arrived at Dollarway School some timelater and dispersed the crowds so the two students and their mothers couldleave.46 That afternoon, Delores York and her father John registered atDollarway without incident. As news of the three students spread throughDollarway and Pine Bluff, segregationists got upset. Houston and York’sfathers reported harassment by members of the Citizens’ Council at the Ar-kansas Pallet Company where both men worked.47

The second appeals trial began the next month in St. Louis, away fromthe rising anger in Dollarway. Howard had appealed Henley’s refusal toorder Dove, Warfield, and Smith’s transfer to Dollarway High and his ap-proval of the board’s desegregation plan. The board entered its own appealto the decision that had allowed Howard to bypass the Pupil AssignmentAct’s stipulations regarding court appeals. Chief Judge Harvey M.Johnsen, the same judge who ruled on the 1959 appeal, affirmed Henley’sruling that cases involving the violation of an individual’s constitutionalrights could go straight to federal courts. However, while the court foundthe board’s current plan to desegregate an insufficient and unlawful appli-cation of the Pupil Assignment Act, it did not see this as evidence that theboard was not acting in reasonable faith. The basis for this decision wastwo-fold. The board could no longer use the criteria of the placement lawor educational theories to determine what was best for a student in regardto which school he or she attended—a decision the court felt that parentsshould make. Secondly, it could not use the Pupil Assignment Act to main-tain segregated schools.48

If, in the wake of Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, federal judges in Ar-kansas and elsewhere evidenced little desire to challenge the constitution-ality of pupil placement laws, both the appellate court and the most recent

46Arkansas Democrat, May 5, 1960.47Southern School News 6 (June 1960): 6. 48Dove v. Parham, 282 F.2d 256 (1960).


Henley rulings had questioned the lawfulness of the Dollarway board’s ap-plication of the Pupil Assignment Act. A consensus seems to have devel-oped that the board had to do something to avoid any further federalintervention. On August 16, Lee Parham, Dollarway district superinten-dent Charles L. Fallis, Sheriff Norton, and other school officials met withGovernor Faubus in Little Rock. They did not officially disclose the sub-ject of this meeting, but the public certainly knew that discussions had oc-curred. A newsletter from the Pine Bluff Sons of Liberty claimed thismeeting involved a “Zionist plan” to integrate.49 While the explanation ofmotive was a bit extreme, their guess about the meeting’s intent was prob-ably not very far off. Two days later, Parham announced that the board,proceeding “in good faith in accordance with the legal advice of its attor-neys,” had admitted Delores York to the first grade at Dollarway Elemen-tary along with ninety white students. Parham asked the community tocontinue to support the board and remember, “We have not given in; wehave conceded a battle to win a war.”50 L. D. Poynter, the president of thePine Bluff Citizens’ Council and a prominent figure in segregationist cir-cles, publicly backed the Dollarway board’s decision and asked that therebe no protest.51 Poynter gave no specific reason for the council’s support.With Faubus, school officials, and the sheriff behind the decision, localsegregationists had few other options beyond resorting to extreme tactics.

The board rejected both Houston and Howard’s applications, andrumor in the community had it that Delores York had only been ac-cepted because she had tested into the top 10 percent of her class andthere was no plausible reason to block her transfer other than race.52 Re-actions in the white community varied. Some white parents threatenedto withdraw their children from Dollarway. One mother said she wasafraid if her daughter started first grade in an integrated class, she mightnot develop what the woman considered to be proper notions of race re-lations. Other parents seemed to resign themselves to integration. A lo-cal man told reporters, “It’s awful hard to be a brave fighter when youropponent is a six-year old girl.”53 A short-lived rumor said the local Cit-izens’ Council would push for the recall of the entire board, but a coun-cil official declared otherwise.54 Perhaps reluctant to draw national

49Sons of Liberty, “The Dollarway Situation,” August 16 Meeting at Gov. Mansion,series 15, box 538, folder 1, Faubus Papers.

50Arkansas Democrat, August 18, 1960.51Pine Bluff Commercial, September 7, 1960.52Southern School News 7 (September 1960): 10.53“Good No-News,” Time, September 19, 1960, p. 54.54Arkansas Democrat, August 19, 1960.


attention, most of Dollarway’s white community accepted the news qui-etly, in contrast to their reactions one year earlier to the Beck ruling.

Dollarway remained quiet as integration approached. In Pine Bluff,Arkansas AM&N students began to organize sit-ins to desegregate publicaccommodations, but faculty strongly discouraged this, and the attempt re-sulted in the expulsion of three students.55 Rumors circulated that the localKu Klux Klan had scheduled a meeting but for some reason called it off.Regardless, local authorities took precautions against violence. Elevenstate troopers in addition to Sheriff Norton’s deputies would be on site forthe start of first grade, though authorities insisted, “we are not expectingtrouble.” Officials did not request the assistance of U.S. marshals or FBIagents stationed in Pine Bluff.56 By accepting token integration, Dollar-way’s board and Citizens’ Council had succeeded in keeping federal agen-cies out of the picture.

When the day finally came, integration went smoothly. On the morn-ing of September 7, 1960, six-year-old Delores York became the first Af-rican-American student to enter the previously all-white DollarwayElementary School. Her father dropped her off at the side entrance of theschool at 8:25 A.M., and fifteen minutes later school board president Par-ham announced that York was safely in class.57 About a week earlier, Gov.Orval Faubus had suggested “a strong possibility of trouble” if Dollarwayintegrated.58 The only sign of discontent, however, was a group of twentyor so men and women lurking in cars near the school. The school kept pressaccess to a minimum. It allowed only six reporters from the AssociatedPress, United Press International, and the Pine Bluff Commercial to gatherin a small roped-off area on school grounds. Sheriff Norton told the rest toleave. “You won’t get anything here because we don’t intend to have astory.”59 Delores York said her day went fine. The highlights included col-oring horses and eating lunch with her classmates, some of whom had evengreeted her.60 The next day, Delores arrived for school about thirty minutesearly, but Parham was quick to assure reporters that this was not a sign oftrouble.61 Otherwise, the reporters outside Dollarway Elementary had littleto write about. The remainder of Delores’s time at Dollarway Elementaryseems to have passed as peacefully as her first day.

55McGee, “It Was the Wrong Time,” 21. 56Arkansas Democrat, September 6, 1960.57Ibid., September 7, 1960.58“Prophecy by Faubus,” Time, August 29, 1960, p. 17. 59Arkansas Democrat, September 7, 1960.60“Good No-News,” 54.61Arkansas Democrat, September 8, 1960.


Though there appeared to have been no overt signs of trouble in theschool, York’s father became a target of harassment, and he was soon firedfrom his job at Arkansas Pallet Company, where he had worked for twelveyears.62 John York was then arrested at a gas station on September 10, oncharges of drunk driving, reckless driving, and disturbing the peace,though he maintained he was helping push a friend’s car to the station withhis truck.63 York received a fine, went to jail for three days, and had his li-cense suspended for thirty days.64

On November 19, 1960, the board presented a new integration plan tothe district court. This plan was essentially the same as the one that hadfailed to meet approval in appeals court, except it allowed for transfers intothe second grade, and it promised that no first-grade transfers would beblocked on purely racial grounds. With nothing helpful to his high-school-age clients and no real progress toward integration provided in the newplan, Howard saw fit to file an objection ten days later.65 At the next hear-ing in December, Henley finally agreed the plan was insufficient. Ratherthan giving a definitive ruling, he, somewhat sarcastically, ordered the

62“Good No-News,” 54.63Southern School News 7 (October 1960): 11.64Ibid. (November 1960): 13.65Ibid. (December 1960): 11.

The Dollarway Student Council in 1962. Courtesy T. T. Tyler Thomp-son.


board to “beef up” the plan so that it might survive at least two or threerounds of litigation.66

The board filed its third, very similar, plan on March 13, 1961. It stillused the Pupil Assignment Act of 1959 as the primary procedure to judgeschool transfers and kept the board’s first-graders-only policy. The onlynovel element was that students were only required to achieve averagescores on the California Short-form Test of Mental Maturity and the Met-ropolitan Readiness Test, rather than top marks.67 Howard objected to thenew plan, saying that it did nothing for his high-school-age clients, CorlissSmith and James Warfield, or students in higher grade levels.68 The litiga-tion continued through April. By May 12, Henley had rendered his verdict.Despite Howard’s objections, Henley gave tentative approval for the thirdplan’s use in the 1961-1962 school year on the condition that the board re-turn with some evidence of progress by July.69

As school registrations loomed, Henley reminded the public that hewould not tolerate any violence.70 When the May 30-31 school registrationhad been completed, six black children had applied to Dollarway Elemen-tary. Samuel W. Cato and Benny R. York, the brother of Delores, regis-tered for first grade. Despite the policy against higher grade transfers, theother four students were lateral transfers; Linda D. Houston and MichaelEdwards to the second grade, Charles Dove to the third grade, and the el-dest York child, Johnny L. York, to the fourth grade.71 As ordered, theboard appeared in court on July 15 and announced its decisions. It ap-proved the transfer of Michael Edwards because he was a good student andwas “well adjusted, neat, clean and industrious, and possessed certainqualities of leadership.” The board rejected the other five requests, includ-ing the two first graders, citing school performance and test scores in sev-eral cases, while it found one child to be too shy and to require constantencouragement from teachers.72

By July, Howard had filed still another challenge to the board’s actionson the grounds that it had taken no real steps toward desegregation and inrejecting five applicants had not shown good-faith compliance with courtorders. Howard also challenged the fairness of required testing for trans-ferees but not for the students already in Dollarway schools. He argued

66Ibid. (January 1961): 12.67Ibid. (April 1961): 10.68Ibid. (May 1961): 11.69Dove v. Parham, 194 F. Supp. 112 (1961).70Pine Bluff Commercial, May 28, 1961.71Southern School News 8 (July 1961): 11.72Dove v. Parham, 196 F. Supp. 944 (1961).


steep testing requirements, the lack of protection against racial bias on thepart of test administrators, and the board’s past actions discouraged stu-dents from believing they even had a chance at acceptance into Dollarway.Henley agreed that the plan had failed for the 1961-1962 year, but he didnot blame the board. A report filed during the proceedings showed that ofthe seventy-five first graders admitted that year to Townsend Park, twenty-two had scored average or better on the same tests all transfer studentswere required to take. Based on this report, Henley concluded that the Dol-larway African-American community showed little interest in desegrega-tion and said the board was not at fault for the plan’s failings under thesecircumstances. Henley also concurred with the rejection of the other fourlateral transfers as the board had convinced him that the students were do-ing poorly in school and the faster pace at Dollarway would only hurt themacademically. However, he felt that for the sake of progress the boardshould admit the first-grade applicants, York and Cato, and should there beso few applicants to the first grade in the future, no testing be employed.73

Benny York, Michael Edwards, and Samuel Cato joined DeloresYork at Dollarway School that fall with no crowds or protests.74 The1961-1962 school year apparently passed without incident. However, thenext year’s school registration saw a setback. No black students appliedfor first grade at Dollarway for the 1962-1963 year, and only one re-quested lateral transfer. The transfer request had come from GeorgeHoward’s daughter Sarah who had applied to enter the tenth grade atDollarway High School. During a hearing before the school board onJune 26, 1962, Sarah stated her wish to attend an accredited school andreceive an integrated education. In addition to accreditation, Dollarwayhad much better facilities for its students. Townsend Park taught typingwith paper keyboards, and the biology lab only had one microscope.75

The board made its refusal, based on its policy against lateral transfers athigher grades, public on July 17.76

Sarah Howard Hobbs recalled that her decision to take a lead in inte-gration came with little family discussion. Her father, by this time head ofthe state’s NAACP chapter, had said that he needed a student who couldclear all the Pupil Assignment Act hurdles without question. There hadbeen constant objections by the board to the three high school students.Dove had insufficient test scores. The morality of Warfield’s home envi-ronment was in question because he had a sister with a child out of wed-

73Ibid.74Arkansas Democrat, September 5, 1961.75Hobbs interview. 76Southern School News 9 (July 1962): 7, 9; ibid. (August 1962): 1, 6.


lock. Smith had passed the criteria, but at one point she stated under oathshe did not want to attend Dollarway High alone. Sarah volunteered to tryher hand at transferring to Dollarway. Her mother and father agreed with-out protest.77

By August 14, Howard, Warfield, and Smith were back in court. Ear-nestine Dove remained on the case file name but had already graduatedfrom Townsend Park High School. This time Howard requested that thecourt allow his daughter to intervene as a plaintiff and brought up the issueof faculty desegregation as well. With September came news of a setback.

77Hobbs interview.

Sarah Howard’s senior portrait, 1965. Courtesy T. T. Tyler Thompson.


The York family had, after the end of the previous school year, moved toDenver, Colorado, where John York had finally found regular work.78 Thisleft Samuel Cato and Michael Edwards as the only two black students inthe Dollarway schools.

In a preliminary hearing on August 30, Henley concluded that thelack of students applying for transfer to Dollarway Elementary meantthere was either no demand for desegregation in the district or somethingwas preventing it. He asked both sides to return with briefs on the mat-ter.79 Howard responded that the board had refused the transfers of hisdaughter and the other two students simply on the grounds of race. Theboard insisted that, whatever the reason for the lack of applicants for the1962-1963 year, it did not prove the plan was bad or could not work ifgiven time. The board’s attorney, Herschel Friday, even suggested thedearth of applicants might be an elaborate ploy by the NAACP to get theboard’s plan thrown out by the court. After hearing both sides, Henley re-mained unwilling to challenge the constitutionality of the Pupil Assign-ment Act upon which Dollarway based its plan, though he now admittedhe did not like the plan. Henley authorized the board to use it again in1963-1964, but he did make one concession. On October 24, he orderedthat the board admit Howard to the tenth grade for the spring 1963 semes-ter because she had passed all the requirements of the act. The judge de-cided Smith and Warfield should finish their last year of high school atTownsend.80

Despite the controversial ruling, the last months of 1962 seem to havepassed quietly, in contrast to the reaction to Beck’s similar decision backin 1959. The only development over the winter break was that Michael Ed-wards and his mother moved from the district indefinitely to care for a sickrelative, leaving Samuel Cato and Sarah Howard as the only two black stu-dents enrolled at Dollarway schools.81

On January 21, 1963, Sarah Howard and Samuel Cato arrived atthe Dollarway School complex to start classes. George Howard hadwarned his daughter that people would be angry, but that she shouldnot retaliate. Sarah’s mother asked her to read Psalms 91 every morn-ing on the way to school.82 Although Henley’s order to admit Sarahhad been made public the previous October, students at DollarwayHigh School were given little notice she would begin classes with

78Southern School News 9 (September 1962): 16.79Ibid.80Ibid. (November 1962): 15.81Ibid. (January 1963): 3.82Hobbs interview.


them.83 The board, having spent the winter break in court arguing foreither a reversal of the order or a postponement until fall 1963, gaveno indication it would follow the order. The public did not learn thatSarah was actually attending Dollarway until January 21.84 AnnWorks, a student also entering the tenth grade, remembers knowingnothing of Sarah before the start of school. Two sisters, who had re-cently moved into the district from out of state, were not taken abackby Sarah’s arrival, though.85 Cathy Hudman, Sarah’s assigned lockermate, and her older sister Earline were friendly to Sarah on the firstday. The Hudmans both helped Sarah become oriented. Cathy Hud-man told reporters on the first day there was some verbal harassment,but mostly kids were surprised. “Everybody wanted to see her . . . itwas like they had a new toy,” commented Earline. But the next day,students reacted with “absolute hatred—much worse than Monday.”Earline said it seemed as if the entire school was following Sarah.86

At Henley’s request, George Howard and school officials hadworked together to keep Sarah out of any risky situations. They had de-cided Sarah would get to school just before the first-period bell to avoidthe bustle of all the other students arriving at school. After a class, shewould go straight to her next one and wait in the room during the break.However, the plan overlooked lunchtime. That second day, Sarah hadlunch with Cathy at an otherwise empty table. The pair had dirt, ice, anda firecracker thrown at them. After eating, both girls went to Sarah’snext class, so she could wait inside as planned, but found the doorlocked. As they waited, a senior named Johnny Irvin surprised the two.Irvin slapped Cathy and began beating Sarah. He gave Sarah a black eyebefore a teacher stopped him and let the two girls into the classroom.Earline was harassed as well, and soon after lunch the Hudman girls leftschool.87

Violence escalated further when George Howard’s brother, WilliamHoward, arrived to pick Sarah and Samuel Cato up at the end of the day.A group of students had surrounded Sarah, and, once William got both kidsinto the car, the group began throwing rocks. One shattered a window ofthe car. When William Howard got out to call the sheriff, a group of highschool students approached him. The confrontation became physical, andWilliam stabbed Johnny Irvin while trying to protect himself. Authorities

83Arkansas Democrat, January 23, 1963.84Pine Bluff Commercial, January 3, 21, 1963.85Ann Works, phone interview with author, March 30, 2009.86Pine Bluff Commercial, January 27, 1963.87Hobbs interview; Pine Bluff Commercial, January 27, 1963.


arrested Howard on charges of carrying a concealed weapon and assaultwith intent to kill.88

The following day, George Howard announced Sarah and Samuelwould not be returning to Dollarway unless he was given some assuranceof their safety. Howard personally requested protection from GovernorFaubus and U.S. Attorney Robert D. Smith.89 On that same day, schoolofficials issued a statement saying they had recorded only one incidentbetween Howard and another student. Otherwise “customary order anddiscipline was maintained.” They did not include the stabbing, however,as it did not occur on school grounds. Sheriff Norton echoed this state-ment.90 The single incident mentioned was, most likely, the attack on Sa-rah during lunch by Johnny Irvin, given that Superintendent CharlesFallis admitted being aware of it during William Howard’s assault trial.91

The Hudmans also did not return to school. Separately from Howard,Mrs. Hudman sought U.S. Attorney Smith’s protection for her daughters.Sheriff Norton later advised her to send her daughters back to school, lestthey face prosecution for truancy.92 Samuel Cato seemed to have escapedany incident in the elementary school during the first two days. AnnWorks recalled that neither she nor her friends had any knowledge ofSamuel’s presence beyond a rumor. Though the schools were in the samecomplex, the buildings were separate, and high school students in gen-eral had little contact with the elementary school kids.93

Several days passed, and Howard, Cato, and the Hudmans had not re-turned to school. The school board issued a letter to parents in the district,explaining that a federal court order had forced the board to let Howardinto Dollarway High School against its judgment. The board insisted it didnot like the decision any more than residents did, but it had to comply inorder to prevent further federal intervention or interruption of the educa-tional program. In order to keep law enforcement and administrative con-trol in local hands, it must maintain order. The board warned thatDollarway faculty would punish anyone caught physically abusing anotherstudent and resort to expulsion if the incident was severe. With the aid of

88There are several versions of the incident with slight differences. For GeorgeHoward’s version, see George Howard, Jr. to Orval Faubus, Western Union Telefax,January 23, 1963, series 15, box 538, folder 1, Faubus Papers; for Sheriff Norton’s ver-sion, see Southern School News 9 (February 1963): 5; for the version used in WilliamHoward’s federal appeal, see State of Arkansas v. William M. Howard, 218 F. Supp. 626(1963).

89Howard to Faubus; Southern School News 9 (February 1963): 5.90Southern School News 9 (February 1963): 5.91Arkansas Gazette, July 18, 1963. 92Pine Bluff Commercial, January 27, 29, 1963. 93Works interview.


parents, the board said, “our district can continue to avoid the strife andoutside interference experienced by other communities.”94

The statement convinced the Hudmans that it was safe to return toclasses on January 29. However, both girls said they were verballyabused, and by noon Earline had left the school in tears after being spiton and called names. Mrs. Hudman said her daughter would not return toDollarway to finish her senior year because of the harassment.95 Both theJustice Department and the FBI said they would watch Dollarway closelyover the next few weeks, but initial information did not indicate the vio-lation of any federal laws.96 On January 30, Samuel Cato and SarahHoward returned to school. There were no reports of any incidents, butthere was a rumor that at the end of the day two sheriff’s deputies hadescorted the two from the school. A spokesman for the sheriff’s depart-ment denied this but did assure the press that deputies were keeping aclose watch on Dollarway.97

After the first week of school, the student body seemed to havecalmed down. Works remembers that the initial reaction of most stu-dents at Dollarway High had primarily been one of shock. She recallsthe uneasiness continuing through the spring.98 Some further planninghad gone into ensuring Sarah’s safety. The board and George Howardagreed that Sarah would eat lunch alone in the room of her class afterlunch. At other times, Sarah had to fend for herself. Physical educationclass was a problem since the gym was in a separate building. Sarah re-called one day that a boy warned her “they’re waiting for you.” Some ofthe girls at Dollarway had a habit of screaming if Sarah touched them,so she created a distraction by brushing up against two girls. Amid thenoise, Sarah was able to get back to class without trouble. Going to andfrom assemblies was also problematic because of the crowds of studentsmoving with little teacher supervision. Her solution was to go straightfrom class to the girl’s rest room and wait until just before the assemblystarted to enter and quietly find a seat in the third or fourth row.99 ButSarah was not without some support. A teacher, Mrs. Annie McClaran,took it upon herself to watch out for Sarah. At assemblies, Mrs. McCla-ran would make sure to sit in front of Sarah to ensure no one wouldbother her. In the words of Ann Works, Mrs. McClaran, known as

94Pine Bluff Commercial, January 29, 1963.95Ibid.96Arkansas Democrat, January 24, 26, 1963.97Pine Bluff Commercial, January 31, 1963.98Works interview. 99Hobbs interview.


“Momma Mac” by the students, “just took Sarah on as somebody thatneeded her momma’ing.”100

There was one final incident that first year. In April, as she walkedacross campus late one day to meet her mother, Sarah noticed the area wascleared of students. As she came around a corner, a group of boys sur-rounded her, and one of them attacked her. An elementary student saw theattack and started screaming for help. Eventually, the high school principalarrived and escorted Sarah to her mother’s car.101

The spring and summer of 1963 brought mixed news for Dollarway.Townsend Park High School finally received accreditation on March 20.102

But when 1963-1964 registration came, no additional black children hadapplied for Dollarway School. For the next two years, Howard and Catowould be the only two African Americans out of some 1,400 students onthe Dollarway campus. George Howard focused his energies on hisbrother’s defense through spring and into summer. The prominent civilrights attorney Wiley Branton, who had attended law school with GeorgeHoward, served as William’s defense attorney. The jury in the case was en-tirely white, but Branton’s strategy of documenting Irvin’s history of vio-lence left the jury deadlocked, forcing the judge to declare a hung jury. Inthe same months, voters narrowly elected a member of the African-Amer-ican community, Arkansas AM&N professor Arthur H. Miller, to the Dol-larway school board.103

Of the twenty-one desegregated districts in Arkansas, Dollarway, de-spite having begun integration four years earlier, had the second lowestpercentage of black students in previously all-white schools by 1964.104

Many of these desegregated districts were located in the western half of thestate. Only Dollarway and Pine Bluff were in parts of Arkansas with blackpopulations over thirty percent.105 With only two black students in other-wise white schools, the Dollarway school district was proving the effec-tiveness of minimal compliance.

Sarah Howard’s second year at Dollarway began without incident. Af-ter that first year, parents and students seemed to realize that one studentin the otherwise white high school was not going to make for radicalchange. Johnny Irvin, the apparent leader of the group of students that had

100Works interview. 101Hobbs interview.102Southern School News 9 (April 1963): 9; ibid. (May 1963): 5.103Ibid. 11 (November 1964): 5.104Ibid. (September 1964): 2.105Bureau of Census, Advance Reports: General Population Characteristics, Arkan-

sas, March 29, 1961 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce), www2.cen-sus.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/ 15611114.pdf (accessed August 28, 2009).


tormented Sarah, had graduated that summer. The rest of the students,while not kind, were indifferent to her presence. Sarah, by being quiet,well-mannered, and an excellent student, gave others no excuse to treat herbadly.106 In biology class, Sarah remembers, she had a functional relation-ship with her lab partner. Though no one had said she could not take partin extracurricular activities, the Howards decided not to take the risk of Sa-rah spending more time than necessary at school. She made no friends atDollarway, and some distance grew between Sarah and old friends atTownsend Park. Sarah’s biggest disappointment was that she was not in-cluded in the high school honors’ society despite being in the top three ofher graduating class.107

The next significant development in Dollarway integration came withthe passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With the possibility of schoolsthat remained segregated losing federal funding, pupil placement laws be-came less appealing. Little Rock schools abandoned the Pupil AssignmentAct as its integration plan on the advice of Herschel Friday, the same at-torney who represented Dollarway. Three days later, on April 26, 1965,Superintendent Fallis announced that Dollarway too had scrapped the actand had submitted a new, undisclosed integration plan one month earlierfor the 1965-1966 year.108

Like Little Rock and other schools across the South, Dollarwayadopted a freedom of choice plan as its integration policy for the 1965-1966 school year. Unlike in Little Rock, the plan went unchallenged inDollarway over the next three years. Under this policy, Townsend Parkand Dollarway school assignments from previous years stayed the same,but a student could choose to transfer to any school in the district withoutrestriction. The board would no longer prevent integration, but it hadplaced the burden on students and their parents to take the initiative. Fol-lowing Sarah Howard’s graduation in 1965, future National FootballLeague player Roscoe Word entered the eighth grade at Dollarway JuniorHigh School. During his sophomore through senior years, Word was astarting wide receiver and defensive end on the Dollarway High Schoolfootball team. Of his years on the team, he recalled, “I think my coacheswere as fair as they could be” but “it was difficult at times.”109 By fall of1968, under the freedom of choice plan, Dollarway School had sixty-fourblack students in grades one through twelve out of 1,328 students, and four

106Works interview.107Hobbs interview.108Southern School News 11 (May 1965): 11.109Darren Ivy, Untold Stories: Black Sports Heroes before Integration (Little Rock:

Wehco Publishing, 2002), 74.


black faculty members out of forty-eight. Pinecrest Elementary had oneblack student and one black teacher out of 323 and 11, respectively. AtTownsend Park schools, there were seven white teachers out of fifty-nine,but the student body of 1,679 remained entirely African-American.110

These numbers show the effectiveness of the freedom of choice plan inmaintaining racial separation in Dollarway.

In early April 1968, three separate cases from Arkansas, Virginia, andTennessee went before the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 27, the Courthanded down a ruling that found the freedom of choice plans in their var-ious incarnations to be unconstitutional. The Court stated that it was the re-sponsibility of the school districts to establish a school system with noracially identifiable schools.111 Almost immediately, Howard brought suitagainst the Dollarway school board on behalf of Samuel Cato seeking fullintegration. In light of the recent ruling, Henley ordered the Dollarwayboard to submit a new integration plan to eliminate its dual school systemsno later than December 1, 1968, and for the new plan to go into effect forthe 1969-1970 year. The board requested a time extension until the sum-mer of 1969 to submit a new plan, but Henley had finally grown weary ofits delaying. He refused a stay, noting that in the preceding nine years theboard had never managed to submit a plan that had not been followed bysix months of litigation.112 Howard appealed the ruling to get the courts toorder the establishment of a unitary school system by the spring term of1969, but the appeal failed, and Henley’s July 25 ruling stood.113

The board complied with Henley’s order and submitted a new plan thatestablished a zone system for the Dollarway and Townsend schools. Zones1 and 3 would be composed of that part of the district west of the Dollar-way Road, and Zones 2 and 4 would be on the east side. Zone 5 was a smallblock in the southwest portion of the district proper. The plan assigned stu-dents residing in Zones 1 and 3 to Dollarway schools, while students inZones 2 and 4 went to Townsend. Students in Zone 5 and the Hardin areawere assigned to Pinecrest for grades one through five and from sixthgrade onwards to the Dollarway schools. The rationale behind the zoningassignments was that it would be dangerous for students to have to walk

110No other ethnic groups were recorded present in Dollarway schools at this time.U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office for Civil Rights, Directory ofPublic Elementary and Secondary Schools in Selected Districts, Enrollment by Racial/Ethnic Group (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968), 57.

111Green et al. v. County School Board of New Kent County et al., 391 U.S. 430(1968); Monroe et al. v. Board of Commissioners of the City of Jackson et al., 391 U.S.450 (1968); Raney et al. v. Board of Education of the Gould School District et al., 391U.S. 433 (1968).

112Cato v. Parham, 293 F. Supp. 1375 (1968).113Cato v. Parham, 403 F.2d 12 (1968).


across the highway to get to school. However, Henley was fully aware ofDollarway’s demographics. The community west of the highway was pre-dominantly white and the community on the east side was predominantlyblack. Thus, under this plan the schools would look almost exactly as theyhad under the freedom of choice system. Henley therefore found the planto be insufficient and ordered a new one presented by May 1, 1969, to gointo effect for the 1969-1970 year.114

In its next plan, submitted on April 29, 1969, the board partially aban-doned the previous zoning plan, and conceded complete integration ofgrades ten through twelve. All students in the district tenth grade and upwould attend Dollarway High School. However, for students in grades onethrough nine the previous plan’s attendance zones would be in effect. Theonly difference was that this plan moved the dividing line several hundredyards to the east, from the Dollarway Road to the Missouri Pacific tracks.All students in grades one through nine living west of the tracks would at-tend Dollarway-Pinecrest schools and those living east of the track wouldattend Townsend Park Schools. The plan included two additional mea-sures. Students living between the highway and the railroad tracks couldchoose to attend either Townsend Park or Dollarway-Pinecrest. Secondly,any student assigned to a school where his race was in the majority couldchoose to transfer to a school where his race was in the minority. The firstmeasure was added because moving the dividing line to the railway trackswould have sent about two hundred white students to Townsend Park Ele-mentary had there not been a dual attendance zone. The second measureprevented any complaints from parents who might follow in the footstepsof the Howards, the Doves, and others in pushing for integration. In re-gards to school faculty and staff, the board’s plan said at least 25 percentof the Dollarway-Pinecrest school faculty would be black and the samepercentage would be white at Townsend Park Elementary. It made no men-tion of high school faculty. Finally, the plan promised to extend the unitaryschool system to include grades seven through nine for 1970-1971 andsubsequent years, but all elementary schools would remain under the zon-ing system. Henley accepted the plan but added a few changes. First, heordered that no less than two hundred white students must attendTownsend Park Elementary so that it would be at least 23 percent white,balancing the number of black students placed in Dollarway-Pinecrest bythe zoning assignment. Secondly, the board must work out a plan to fullyintegrate the elementary grades by the 1972-1973 school year.115

114Cato v. Parham, No. 297 F. Supp. 403 (1969).115Cato v. Parham, No. 302 F. Supp. 129 (1969).


This time, white residents of the district did not uniformly support theboard’s plan. Citizens of the discontiguous Hardin area responded by cir-culating petitions to revive the old Hardin school district. Prior to 1948,Hardin had been a separate district offering classes up to the ninth grade,with the area’s high school students sent to neighboring districts on a tu-ition basis. In 1946, fire destroyed one of the two buildings in the Hardinschool complex, and two years later Dollarway annexed the district. Underthe Dollarway administration, the building still standing in Hardin wasused as an elementary school until 1964, when it was closed and all Hardinstudents were required to travel to Dollarway schools. At the time of Catov. Parham, the Hardin area was sending about 270 students to Dollarway,only five of whom were black. Hardin residents voted in favor of the sep-aration measure on September 11, 1969. The Jefferson County Board ofEducation began reallocating Dollarway district funds and assets to rees-tablish the Hardin district.116

Though Dollarway residents saw the secession movement as a ploy toavoid integration, Hardin’s relationship with Dollarway had soured by thelate 1960s for a number of reasons. Since accepting Hardin into the district,the board had been adamant in refusing to appoint a Hardin resident to fillany seats made vacant by a resignation. Residents of Hardin were also up-set with the closure of Hardin Elementary.117

The Hardin issue precipitated some organized protest by students inthe fall of 1969. That September, eight white students at the recently re-named Dollarway Junior High walked out of classes. The leader of thegroup, who was a resident of Hardin, told the press, “Hardin peoplewouldn’t be going to that school and the Dollarway people didn’t want tobe going to that school with Negroes.”118 Some African-American studentsseem to have been unhappy with the situation at Dollarway Junior High aswell. The next month, a group of fourteen black picketers marched outsideof the school. The group was a mixture of AM&N students and formerDollarway pupils. Their signs carried messages such as “Stop TeacherBrutality,” and a school official told the press that he recognized one of thepicketers as a student who had been expelled from the junior high severalweeks before for profanity. Though the demonstration was brief, parentspulled many white students and a small number of black students fromclasses.119

116Burleson v. County Board of Election Commissioners of Jefferson County, 308 F.Supp. 352 (1970).

117Pine Bluff Commercial, September 10, 1969.118Ibid., September 13, 1969. 119Ibid., November 5, 1969.


Residents of Dollarway led by William Burleson filed suit againstthe board of education for a permanent injunction against the formationof the new Hardin district—primarily for political reasons. If Hardin se-ceded, the district would lose about 7 percent of its annual revenue, andDollarway would shift to a black voting majority. In court, they arguedthat Hardin residents only wanted to break from the district to escape in-tegration. Henley agreed and said the law did not require Hardin area res-idents to live in the district, but, if they chose to, they must endure boththe benefits and burdens until the district settled the matter of integra-tion.120

Despite the disruptions caused by the Hardin suit, grades seventhrough twelve had integrated without incident in August 1969. As in 1960when Delores York arrived at the elementary school, white parents ac-cepted integration as an unpleasant necessity.121 At least one event that fallprovided those on both sides of Dollarway’s color line a respite from racialtensions. Dollarway High School’s integrated Cardinals began their foot-ball season with a victory over the Pine Bluff Zebras on their home field.122

In the summer of 1970, the Dollarway board went to court for a finaltime to avoid full integration. It had utterly failed to follow Henley’s orderto assign two hundred white students to Townsend Park School during theprevious school year. Townsend Park only had fifteen white students en-rolled out of 1,566 elementary students in the district, while Pinecrest andDollarway were both still 70 to 80 percent white. Henley, no doubt sick ofthe case, ignored school semesters and ordered that by no later than Octo-ber 1, 1970, Dollarway School District had to establish a completely uni-tary and integrated school system both in terms of students and faculties.Henley made his final ruling, stating that “the death knell had sounded forsegregation” in Dollarway.123

The final plan went into effect for the fall term of 1970. All first andsecond graders were assigned to Dollarway Elementary, all third gradersto Pinecrest, and all fourth through sixth graders to Townsend Park Ele-mentary. All seventh through twelfth-grade students were assigned to Dol-larway Junior High and High Schools. Each school’s student body wasabout 55 percent black, roughly equal to the African-American proportionof the district’s population. Each school’s faculty more or less reflected themake-up of its student body with the total in the district of fifty-seven black

120Burleson v. County Board of Election Commissioners of Jefferson County, 308 F.Supp. 352 (1970).

121Pine Bluff Commercial, August 29, 1969.122Thompson, “Dollarway’s Pathways,” 13.123Cato v. Parham, 316 F. Supp. 678 (1970).


teachers and fifty-seven white.124 This did not solve all the district’s prob-lems, however, as it had not yet settled the matter of faculty equality. JudgeHenley’s court called the board into the courtroom once more five yearslater for refusing to appoint a senior African-American coach as head foot-ball coach and athletic director for the district.125

But eleven years of litigation had finally brought about the full integra-tion of Dollarway schools. Prominent segregationist leaders had seen Dol-larway as a site for resistance. Yet protest from the Citizens’ Council orany other pro-segregation organization quickly dissipated. The schoolboard managed to keep much of the controversy confined to the courts. Nolandmark cases arose from Dollarway, but the results proved that desegre-gation in southeastern Arkansas was possible, though it might be initiallynarrowed and slowed by minimum compliance. Over the long term, how-ever, integration’s legal triumph would be vitiated by a “white flight” thatresurrected racial separation. In 2007, Dollarway schools’ student bodywas 92 percent black, though African Americans represented less than 70percent of Jefferson County’s population.126

124U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office for Civil Rights,Directory of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools in Selected Districts, Enrollmentand Staff by Racial/Ethnic Group (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970),53.

125Cross v. Board of Education of the Dollarway Arkansas School District, et al., 395F. Supp. 537 (1975).

126School Data Direct, “Dollarway School District,” www.schooldatadirect.org(accessed August 28, 2009).

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