NAACP @ 100 #3

On July 4, 1918, one hundred years ago this summer, the first Arkansas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was organized in the state capital of Little Rock. One of the NAACP’s most famous moments in the state came forty years later. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision, state NAACP president Daisy Bates, who was elected in 1952, spearheaded efforts to desegregate Arkansas schools. After events at Central High School in 1957, the following year NAACP attorneys successfully argued in the case of Cooper v. Aaron that the violence and disruption witnessed in Little Rock could not be used as an excuse to evade legal responsibilities to desegregate, thereby striking a blow to white massive resistance.