Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby
(1905-1999) served as vice principal of girls at Little Rock Central High School during the Little Rock crisis of 1957. As a dedicated teacher, Huckaby spent the year of the crisis working in support of desegregation, protecting the Little Rock Nine, maintaining order at Central High, and promoting the education of students.
Huckaby was born in 1905 in Hamburg, Arkansas, to Henry Lewis Paisley and Elizabeth Merrell Paisley. After attending grammar school in Texas, Huckaby enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where she earned a degree in education in 1926 and a master’s degree in 1930. She was hired to teach at Little Rock Senior High School in 1930. Three years later, she married Glen T. Huckaby, also a Little Rock teacher. In 1946, she was promoted to assistant principal, later called the dean of girls.
During the Central High Crisis, Huckaby’s primary responsibility was to ensure the safety of the nine African-American students who were integrating Central High School. Later, she published a memoir titled, Crisis at Central High, which detailed the events of that year, the challenges faced by the students, and her attempts to continue the education of students at Central High School
Behind the scenes of the 1981 movie “Crisis at Central High, ” actress Joanne Woodward poses for a picture with Elizabeth Huckaby, the school teacher she portrays in film.
“Jerry Jones, Little Rock, and the photo
the Cowboys owner juked for decades”
“On 9 September 1957, while a sophomore at Arkansas’ North Little Rock High, a mob of White boys blocked six Black students from entering the school – and Jones was in the crowd. This was three years after the Supreme Court struck down segregated schools. Also in September 1957, just across town, Little Rock Central High was grabbing headlines across the country as angry mobs and the state’s national guard put themselves between that school and another cohort of Black students – the Little Rock Nine.”
White students at North Little Rock High School block the doors of the school, denying access to six Black students in September 1957. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is at the back of the crowd. Photograph: William P Straeter/AP
A close up of the North Little Rock High School photo. Jerry Jones is in a horizontal striped shirt, to the right of the raised camera. Photograph: William P Straeter/AP
Reporter stunned after spotting NFL owner Jerry Jones in 1957 photo
Virginia Walden Ford, the real-life hero of the new film “Miss Virginia” starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Modine, talks about integrating Little Rock schools and leading the charge to escape failing D.C. public schools.
Virginia Walden Ford
Ford and her twin sister Harrietta were among the first 130 students chosen to desegregate the high schools in Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1960s. Ford is passionate about education. In fact, both her parents were public school teachers. Today, Ford has become a major school choice advocate, passionate about innovation in education and empowering parents with children in the education system.
She was the inspiration for the film Miss Virginia, which tells the story of how she got involved in the fight for educational equality.
