Breaking the Silence: The Little Rock Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools, 1958-1963 Contributor(s): Murphy, Sara (Author) |
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ISBN: 1557285152 ISBN-13: 9781557285157 Publisher: University of Arkansas Press OUR PRICE: $25.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 1997 Annotation: A leader of the Women's Emergency Committee to Open our Schools recounts the Little Rock integration crisis and Gov. Orval Fabus's closing of the local schools. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | United States - State & Local - South (al,ar,fl,ga,ky,la,ms,nc,sc,tn,va,wv) - Social Science | Discrimination & Race Relations - Education | Administration - General |
Dewey: 379.263 |
LCCN: 97002344 |
Physical Information: 0.97" H x 6.44" W x 9" (1.11 lbs) 336 pages |
Themes: - Chronological Period - 1950's - Chronological Period - 1960's - Chronological Period - 20th Century - Cultural Region - Southeast U.S. - Geographic Orientation - Arkansas - Cultural Region - Mid-South - Cultural Region - South |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: The Little Rock Central High School integration crisis did not end in1957 when President Eisenhower sent a portion of the first Airborne Division to protect nine black students. The turmoil was entering its second year in 1958 when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus invoked a hastily passed state law to close the high schools rather than obey the federal court orders that would integrate them. A group of respectable, middle-class white women, faced with the prospect of no schools as well as the further loss of their city's good name, turned militant. Led by Adolphine Fletcher Teny, a prominent, "old family" civic leader in her seventies, the wome n quickly put together the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), a highly effective organization that bombarded the city with ads, fliers, and statements challenging Faubus's action. At peak membership, the WEC mustered two thousand Forty years later, Sara Murphy, a key member of the WEC, recounts the rarely told sto1y of these courageous women who formed a resistance movement. With passion and sensitivity, she reconstructs the challenges and triumphs of that battle, which issued from the mutual link Southern white women shared with disfranchised African Americans in their common goal for full citizenship. |