Turn Away Thy Son Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation

Name: Turn Away Thy Son Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation
Price: 5.7 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780743297196

ISBN-10: 0743297199

ISBN-13: 9780743297196

Edition: 2007

Authors: Elizabeth Jacoway

List price: $30.00

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In September 1957, the nation was transfixed by nine black students attempting to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in the wake of the Supreme Court'sBrown v. Board of Educationdecision. Governor Orval Faubus had defied the city's integration plan by calling out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school. Newspapers across the nation ran front-page photographs of whites, both students and parents, screaming epithets at the quiet, well-dressed black children. President Eisenhower reluctantly deployed troops from the 101st Air-borne, both outside and inside the school. Integration proceeded, but the turmoil of Little Rock had only just begun.… Public schools were soon shut down for a full year. Black students endured outrageous provocation by white classmates. Governor Faubus's popularity skyrocketed, while the landmark caseCooper v. Aaronworked its way to the Supreme Court and eventually paved the way for the integration of the south. Betsy Jacoway was a Little Rock student just two years younger than the youngest of the Little Rock Nine. Her "Uncle Virgil" was Superintendent of Schools Virgil Blossom. Congressman Brooks Hays was an old family friend, and her "Uncle Dick" was Richard Butler, the lawyer who arguedCooper v. Aaronbefore the Supreme Court. Yet, at the time, she was cocooned away from the controversy in a protective shell that was typical for white southern "good girls." Only in graduate school did she begin to question the foundations of her native world, and her own distance from the controversy. Turn Away Thy Sonis the product of thirty years of digging behind the conventional account of the crisis, interviewing whites and blacks, officials and students, activists and ordinary citizens.A tour de forceof history and memory, it is also a brilliant, multifaceted mirror to hold up to America today. She knows what happened to the brave black students once they got inside the doors of the school. She knows how the whites' fear of "race mixing" drove many locals to extremes of anger, paranoia, and even violence. She knows that Orval Faubus was only a reluctant segregationist, and that her own cousin's timid tokenism precipitated the crisis. Above all,Turn Away Thy Sonshows in vivid detail why school desegregation was the hottest of hot-button issues in the Jim Crow south. In the deepest recesses of the southern psyche, Jacoway encounters the fear of giving black men sexual access to white women. The truth about Little Rock differs in many ways from the caricature that emerged in the press and in many histories -- but those differences pale in comparison to the fundamental driving force behind the story.Turn Away Thy Sonis a riveting, heartbreaking, eye-opening book.

Book details

List price: $30.00
Copyright year: 2007
Publisher: Free Press
Publication date: 1/9/2007
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 496
Size: 6.25" wide x 9.25" long x 1.25" tall
Weight: 1.694
Language: English

Elizabeth Jacoway grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she lived through the Little Rock desegregation crisis of 1957-59, but failed to question what was happening in her community. Her eyes were opened by graduate study in history at the University of North Carolina, where she earned a Ph.D. She has spent the past thirty years investigating the Little Rock crisis, interviewing every available participant, including members of her own family, while teaching at the University of Florida, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and Lyon College. Married and the mother of two grown sons, she lives in Newport, Arkansas.



Preface


Introduction: Miscegenation and the Beast


Defining The Debate: Harry Ashmore


Massive Resistance: Jim Johnson


Paternalistic Gentleman: Archie House and the Establishment


Blue-Collar Opposition: Amis Guthridge


A Time of Panic: Virgil Blossom


Interregnum: The Chosen Few


The Crisis Breaks: Orval Faubus


The Minefield in the Middle: Brooks Hays


In Search of Compromise: Faubus, Hays, and Eisenhower


Central High School, Act One: Daisy Bates


Into the Cauldron: The Little Rock Nine


A Crisis of Leadership: Robert R. Brown and the Civic Elite


Torments Behind Closed Doors: Minnijean Brown


The Battle In the Courts: Richard C. Butler


Empty Schools: Wiley Branton


The Women Organize: Vivion Brewer


Rebirth: Everett Tucker


The New Elite Consensus: Gaston Williamson


Conclusion: A Bang and a Whimper


Afterword: A Note on Miscegenation


Notes


Acknowledgments


Index