- Collection:
- Land of (Unequal) Opportunity: Documenting the Civil Rights Struggle in Arkansas
- Title:
- Statement by Virgil Blossom Regarding Integration
- Publisher:
- Fayetteville, Ark. : University of Arkansas Libraries
- Date of Original:
- 1956-03-14
- Subject:
- African Americans--Arkansas
Civil rights--Arkansas
Race discrimination--Arkansas
Segregation--Arkansas - People:
- Bates, Daisy
Crenshaw, J.C.
Darragh, Fred
Ashmore, Harry S.
Shropshire, Jackie L.
Williams, Thad - Location:
- United States, Arkansas, 34.75037, -92.50044
- Medium:
- documents (object genre)
- Type:
- Text
- Format:
- application/pdf
- Description:
- Statement of Virgil Blossom regarding Daisy Bates and the integration of Central High School in 1957.
Integration -- Blacks -- African-Americans -- Education -- Little Rock Central High School -- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- Little Rock -- Pulaski
Then the next question that was discussed there that day was the question of the possible legality of our Plan in line with the Constitution. They turned to Shropshire and Williams and asked what their opinion was and their answer was almost verbatim that "We don't like the Plan, but they can get more than the time they are asking." Mrs. Bates has personal hostility because I will not integrate immediately. I have been very frank with our teachers When we opened school the next hear I explained this Plan on the first day of our pre-school con- ference, the second or third of September, 1954. I took our lines - our Plan - and went over it with every member of the Little Rock public shool staff. The morning of that opening conference I explained it to the white teachers. That afternoon I went to the Gibbs School and explained it to the colored teachers and that is wher I think I incurred the wrath of Mrs. Bates. Mrs. Bates sat in the back of the room on an uninvited status, so Mrs. Bates from the State Press and Mr. Jones, the Editor of the Southern Mediator Journal, were both back there. When we got to the question of integration, I said, "I am going to tell you the facts of life, waht you need to know, not what you want to hear me say. Some day there will be, in all likelihood, colored teachers teaching white children, but it is my opinion that that will not will come in your lifetime." This Plan is proposed as a method of meeting the law of integration in the schools and in doing this we think we are providing a plan that is humane to the colored teachres; that we will save more colored teachers with these Plan than under any other method. In that meeting after I had answer their question that there would be no integration of teachers, on at least three different occasions colored teachers asked the same question. I finally said, "There is no FECP in the Supreme Court decision. Colored teachers will not be teaching white children," and that is when Mrs. Bates got mad at me at that meeting in September, 1954. All she did was take notes. She is the wife of the Editor of the - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.uark.edu/cdm/ref/collection/Civilrights/id/1719
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.uark.edu/iiif/2/Civilrights:1719/manifest.json
- Additional Rights Information:
- Please contact Special Collections for information on copyright.
- Original Collection:
- University of Central Arkansas Archives and Special Collections, Richard C. Butler Papers (M 88-02)
- Contributing Institution:
- University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Libraries
- Rights:
-
Statement by Virgil Blossom Regarding Integration
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