Little Rock Central High School, an accredited comprehensive public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, rises in front of you. This building was the site of the Little Rock Crisis in 1957, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation by race in public schools was unconstitutional three years earlier — a moment in the period of heightened activism known as the civil rights movement. The very streets here speak to that history: you face the intersection of Little Rock Nine Way, a section of Park Street designated in September 2022, and Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive, formerly 14th Street.
Daisy Bates, an African-American journalist and state NAACP president, played a key role in bringing about, through the 1957 crisis, the integration of the school. Central’s story reaches even further back. It traces its origins to 1869 when the Sherman School operated in a wooden structure at 8th and Sherman streets and graduated its first class on June 13, 1873.
In 1885 the Sherman School moved to 14th and Scott streets and was named Scott Street School, more commonly City High School. In 1890 the Peabody School was constructed at West Capitol and Gaines streets and named for philanthropist George Peabody. Picture Daisy Bates leading the fight for integration at the intersection of Little Rock Nine Way and Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive.