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1856 Mansfield, Texas high school integration riot...
1856 Mansfield, Texas high school integration riot...
Item # 719157
September 01, 1956
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 1, 1956
* Mansfield, Texas high school desegregation incident
* Civil Rights Movement - Negroes - students
* Post Brown v. Board of Education court decision
The front page has a one column heading: "RANGERS CALLED IN RACE DISORDER" with subhead and photo. (see images) Coverage continues on page 6 with another related photo.
Complete with 30 pages, a little margin wear, generally in good condition.
background: In August 1956, Mansfield, Texas became the site of a pivotal and disturbing moment in the civil rights movement when white residents violently resisted a federal court order to desegregate Mansfield High School. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and a specific court order in Jackson v. Rawdon allowing three Black students to enroll, local officials and hundreds of townspeople openly defied the mandate. A white mob—estimated at 300 to 400 strong—hung Black effigies in front of the school, blocked entrances, and threatened violence, while Texas Governor Allan Shivers escalated tensions by sending Texas Rangers not to enforce the court order but to uphold segregation, effectively endorsing mob rule. Instead of integrating, Mansfield ISD bused Black students to schools in Fort Worth for nearly a decade. This open defiance marked one of the first and most blatant failures of federal enforcement of desegregation in the South, predating and influencing the better-known Little Rock crisis in 1957. Mansfield ultimately remained segregated until 1965, when the threat of losing federal funding finally forced compliance.
Category: The 20th Century
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