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Little Rock Private School Corporation

In 1958, Gov. Orval Faubus presided over a segregationist Arkansas General Assembly that passed legislation to hold a referendum in a school district. The voters could choose to desegregate public high schools or to close them completely. Little Rock voted to close them completely. The morning after the announcement of the referendum result, Faubus pressured the school board into leasing the public schools to a Little Rock Private School Corporation for private operation. Attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Branton later successfully petitioned the Eighth Circuit Appeals Court for an injunction against such an action. Faubus then assisted the private school corporation in purchasing private buildings with public funds to operate a private school. For one term, the private school corporation provided a limited school service for some of the city’s white students before finally going bankrupt.