Last updated: February 3, 2021
Article
Central High School, 1927 to today
NPS Photo
By 1924, the city’s high school was considerably overcrowded and Little Rock’s business and civic leaders saw a need for a much larger facility to handle future enrollment needs. Built in 1927 as Little Rock Senior High School, Central was named “America’s Most Beautiful High School” by the American Institute of Architects. Designed as a mix of Art Deco and Collegiate Gothic architectural styles, the school was built to evoke images of higher seats of learning in Europe. One of the primary design elements is the four Greco-Roman cast stone figures over the school’s main entrance. During the school’s dedication in September 1927, school board member Lillian McDermott said that the new building would “stand as a public school where Ambition is fired, where Personality is developed, where Opportunity is presented, and where Preparation in the solution of life’s problems is begun.” The school’s immense size was designed to inspire awe for learning. The building is two city blocks long and includes 150,000 square feet of floor space. Over 36 million pounds of concrete and 370 tons of steel went into the building’s construction. It cost $1.5 million in 1927. The school received extensive publicity upon its opening; an article in the Arkansas Gazette said, “we have hundreds of journalists in our fair city for the dedication” of the new high school.
At its construction, Central’s auditorium seated 2,000 and included a 60 x 160 ft. stage that doubled as the gymnasium. In 1935, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the “ultra-modern” football stadium, Quigley Field, behind the school. Named for Tiger Coach Earl Quigley, who coached Little Rock teams from 1914 to 1935, in its early years the stadium was the state’s largest and hosted many college and university teams including the Arkansas Razorbacks. In 1932, Little Rock High School hosted a radio program, broadcast weekly from the school tower. The show included music, dramatic readings, and short talks.
As the United States entered World War II, many of Central’s seniors enlisted in the armed forces. Students also raised $175,000.00 by selling war bonds and stamps. After the war, a recycled barracks building was relocated to Central’s campus and became known as the Tiger Inn, where many students met and danced the lunch period away. In 1943, the school’s first principal, John A. Larson, retired. The Tiger Fieldhouse was added in 1951, eliminating the need to use the auditorium’s stage for games, and a new library was built in 1969—named for longtime principal Jess W. Matthews. In 1953, the school’s name was changed to Little Rock Central High School, in anticipation of a new high school, Hall High, in Pulaski Heights.
In the spring of 1956, Elvis Presley made his Little Rock debut at Robinson Auditorium, a year later Central students were rocked by a much larger event as their school became the focus of the federal government’s commitment to eliminating segregated public schools. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public education was unconstitutional. In Little Rock, hostilities arose over the admission of nine African American students to Central High School. President Dwight Eisenhower was compelled to use troops from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to escort the nine students into the school. The president’s action was the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period that federal military force was used to support African American civil rights. Federalized Arkansas National Guard troops remained for the rest of the school year. Inside the school, teachers and students tried to carry on as usual, while a small group of students consistently harassed the nine African American students. Vice Principal for Girls Elizabeth Huckaby wrote to her brother saying, “our role as administrators seems to be to try to carry on education as normally as possible and to protect these children with every precaution we can. The NAACP is almost as mad at us as the Capital Citizens’ Council [segregationist organization] for our ‘lack of discipline’. But there are a hundred ways of making the Negroes miserable without being detected. As one person put it, it’s hard to put these Negro children…up against our near- delinquents.”
Senior Ernest Green became the first African American graduate of Central High in May 1958. During the summer, while the NAACP pursued the matter through the courts, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus signed a bill into law, allowing him to close all four of Little Rock’s public high schools to prevent further desegregation efforts. Two weeks later, Little Rock’s citizens voted against the immediate integration of all the district’s schools and the high schools remained closed for the duration of the 1958-59 school year. In May 1959, three of the six school board members voted not to renew the contracts of 44 teachers and administrators who they felt had supported desegregation. This move prompted the city’s leaders to act, and a campaign to recall the three segregationist school board members succeeded. That fall, the newly-constituted school board reopened the high schools under the existing desegregation plan.
By 1961, international events continued to affect Central’s students as the Cuban Missile Crisis loomed over the nation. Central High Tiger editor, Ruth Ann Vaughan, wrote, “one of the changes evident in today’s ever-moving society, and especially here at Central, is the decline of the school as a social institution as well as an educational one. Students today are more concerned with international affairs than they are with local events.” Two years later, Principal Jess Matthews relayed the news of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the student body saying, “at this time in American history many Central High School students and teachers feel a sense of personal as well as national loss.” One month before the president was killed, the Central High Concert Band had played for him at the State Fair in Little Rock. The 1970-71 school year brought less earth-shattering, but nevertheless enduring changes to campus. For the first time female students and faculty were allowed to wear slacks to school as an alternative to dresses or skirts. That same year, a large contingent of male students formed a cheering section called “The Wild Bunch.”
Discouraged by school officials, this group became known for providing ample spirit at football and basketball games. The next year, the school district, in order to comply with a federal desegregation order, submitted a plan to convert Central into a junior high school. After an extended court battle and picketing of the district’s administrative offices by Central students, parents, and teachers, the plan was overturned. In 1984, Central’s auditorium was renamed in memory of Roosevelt Thompson, a 1980 graduate and Rhodes Scholar, who died in an automobile accident shortly before he was to graduate from Yale University.
In 1998, President William Jefferson Clinton signed legislation designating the school and nearby properties as a National Historic Site to “preserve, protect, and interpret for the benefit, education, and inspiration of present and future generations…its role in the integration of public schools and the development of the Civil Rights movement in the United States.” Today, Central High is the only operating high school in the nation to receive such designation—and it is an historic site that includes not only a past, but a present and a future as well—in the form of an ever-evolving student body.
Laura A. Miller
[Information for this article was taken in part from “Golden Years,” written by students and faculty at Central High School]
At its construction, Central’s auditorium seated 2,000 and included a 60 x 160 ft. stage that doubled as the gymnasium. In 1935, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the “ultra-modern” football stadium, Quigley Field, behind the school. Named for Tiger Coach Earl Quigley, who coached Little Rock teams from 1914 to 1935, in its early years the stadium was the state’s largest and hosted many college and university teams including the Arkansas Razorbacks. In 1932, Little Rock High School hosted a radio program, broadcast weekly from the school tower. The show included music, dramatic readings, and short talks.
As the United States entered World War II, many of Central’s seniors enlisted in the armed forces. Students also raised $175,000.00 by selling war bonds and stamps. After the war, a recycled barracks building was relocated to Central’s campus and became known as the Tiger Inn, where many students met and danced the lunch period away. In 1943, the school’s first principal, John A. Larson, retired. The Tiger Fieldhouse was added in 1951, eliminating the need to use the auditorium’s stage for games, and a new library was built in 1969—named for longtime principal Jess W. Matthews. In 1953, the school’s name was changed to Little Rock Central High School, in anticipation of a new high school, Hall High, in Pulaski Heights.
In the spring of 1956, Elvis Presley made his Little Rock debut at Robinson Auditorium, a year later Central students were rocked by a much larger event as their school became the focus of the federal government’s commitment to eliminating segregated public schools. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public education was unconstitutional. In Little Rock, hostilities arose over the admission of nine African American students to Central High School. President Dwight Eisenhower was compelled to use troops from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to escort the nine students into the school. The president’s action was the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period that federal military force was used to support African American civil rights. Federalized Arkansas National Guard troops remained for the rest of the school year. Inside the school, teachers and students tried to carry on as usual, while a small group of students consistently harassed the nine African American students. Vice Principal for Girls Elizabeth Huckaby wrote to her brother saying, “our role as administrators seems to be to try to carry on education as normally as possible and to protect these children with every precaution we can. The NAACP is almost as mad at us as the Capital Citizens’ Council [segregationist organization] for our ‘lack of discipline’. But there are a hundred ways of making the Negroes miserable without being detected. As one person put it, it’s hard to put these Negro children…up against our near- delinquents.”
Senior Ernest Green became the first African American graduate of Central High in May 1958. During the summer, while the NAACP pursued the matter through the courts, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus signed a bill into law, allowing him to close all four of Little Rock’s public high schools to prevent further desegregation efforts. Two weeks later, Little Rock’s citizens voted against the immediate integration of all the district’s schools and the high schools remained closed for the duration of the 1958-59 school year. In May 1959, three of the six school board members voted not to renew the contracts of 44 teachers and administrators who they felt had supported desegregation. This move prompted the city’s leaders to act, and a campaign to recall the three segregationist school board members succeeded. That fall, the newly-constituted school board reopened the high schools under the existing desegregation plan.
By 1961, international events continued to affect Central’s students as the Cuban Missile Crisis loomed over the nation. Central High Tiger editor, Ruth Ann Vaughan, wrote, “one of the changes evident in today’s ever-moving society, and especially here at Central, is the decline of the school as a social institution as well as an educational one. Students today are more concerned with international affairs than they are with local events.” Two years later, Principal Jess Matthews relayed the news of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the student body saying, “at this time in American history many Central High School students and teachers feel a sense of personal as well as national loss.” One month before the president was killed, the Central High Concert Band had played for him at the State Fair in Little Rock. The 1970-71 school year brought less earth-shattering, but nevertheless enduring changes to campus. For the first time female students and faculty were allowed to wear slacks to school as an alternative to dresses or skirts. That same year, a large contingent of male students formed a cheering section called “The Wild Bunch.”
Discouraged by school officials, this group became known for providing ample spirit at football and basketball games. The next year, the school district, in order to comply with a federal desegregation order, submitted a plan to convert Central into a junior high school. After an extended court battle and picketing of the district’s administrative offices by Central students, parents, and teachers, the plan was overturned. In 1984, Central’s auditorium was renamed in memory of Roosevelt Thompson, a 1980 graduate and Rhodes Scholar, who died in an automobile accident shortly before he was to graduate from Yale University.
In 1998, President William Jefferson Clinton signed legislation designating the school and nearby properties as a National Historic Site to “preserve, protect, and interpret for the benefit, education, and inspiration of present and future generations…its role in the integration of public schools and the development of the Civil Rights movement in the United States.” Today, Central High is the only operating high school in the nation to receive such designation—and it is an historic site that includes not only a past, but a present and a future as well—in the form of an ever-evolving student body.
Laura A. Miller
[Information for this article was taken in part from “Golden Years,” written by students and faculty at Central High School]