Choices in Little Rock Unit

In this unit, students will encounter histories of race, racism, and racial violence that are likely to be emotionally challenging and elicit a range of responses. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of previewing the resources in this curriculum to make sure they are appropriate for the intellectual and emotional needs of your students. 

It is difficult to predict how students will respond to such challenging readings, documents, and audio material. One student may respond with emotion to an account or source, while others may not find it powerful in the same way. In addition, different people demonstrate emotion in different ways. Some students will be silent. Some may laugh. Some may not want to talk. Some may take days to process difficult stories. For some, a particular firsthand account may be incomprehensible; for others, it may be familiar. 

We urge teachers to create space for students to have a range of reactions and emotions. This might include allowing time for silent reflection or writing in journals, as well as facilitating structured discussions to help students process content together. Specific strategies are mentioned in the lesson activities, but we encourage you to explore the additional related materials below. 

Some students will not want to share their reactions to emotionally challenging content in class, and teachers should respect that in discussions. For their learning and emotional growth, it is crucial to allow for a variety of student responses to emotionally challenging content.

Journals help students develop their voices and clarify their ideas as they keep a record of their thinking and learning that will ultimately help them answer the essential question being considered. During this unit, there will be many opportunities for students to reflect on both the essential question and the characteristics of a strong democracy; therefore, we highly encourage the use of a journal during this unit. 

There are a number of ways that you might incorporate reflective journal writing into this curriculum. We recommend that you review the teaching strategy Journals in a Facing History Classroom and consider the questions and suggestions there to guide your use of student journals in your class. While journals provide an important space for thoughtful reflection, you might also use them as a means of assessing students’ intellectual and emotional engagement with the material. If you choose to do so, it is important at the outset of the unit that you establish clear expectations and procedures for how and when you will assess journals and communicate this information to your students.

The Choices in Little Rock unit is divided into four parts:

• Part 1: What Strengthens or Weakens Democracy? introduces the concepts central to the unit: democracy, identity, and racism. Students consider how identity can shape the choices people make about themselves and others and how these choices impact democracy.
• Part 2: Dividing a Nation: Segregation and Its Consequences considers the historical context in which the crisis in Little Rock occurred. Students trace the history of segregation in the United States and explore its social, legal, and political consequences, as well as reflect on its impact on democracy.
• Part 3: Choices in Little Rock begins the case study by examining the choices that people in Little Rock and elsewhere made during the school desegregation crisis and encouraging reflection on how these choices strengthened or undermined democracy.
• Part 4: Legacies and Taking Informed Action provides students with an opportunity to reflect on progress toward and setbacks to school integration after 1957 and to apply the lessons they’ve learned about strengthening democracy by engaging in a Taking Informed Action project.

The unit also includes an optional assessment that asks students to write an argumentative essay in response to the following prompt, using evidence from the unit to support their thinking:

Over the course of this unit, you have examined the history of efforts to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. You have also looked closely at how choices—made by community members, high school students, journalists, and elected leaders, to name just a few—play a major role in either strengthening or weakening democracy. For the culminating unit assessment, you will construct a written argument that you support with examples from the unit in response to the following question:  

How do the choices people make, individually and collectively, strengthen or weaken democracy? 

Five activities are interspersed throughout the unit to prepare students for this assessment, providing time and space for them to draw connections between what they have learned and the essential question. These activities can be skipped if you opt not to use the unit assessment.  

The n-word appears in the following readings: 

• Alex Wilson on Covering Little Rock as a Black Journalist as an extension activity in Lesson 10 (Part 3)
• Choosing to Walk with Ernest Green Lesson 11 (Part 3)

In these documents, we have chosen to let the word remain as it originally appeared, without any substitution. In life and in school, many students will encounter language that has historically been used to perpetuate racism and/or dehumanize people. The dehumanizing power of this term and the ease with which some Americans have used it to describe fellow human beings is central to understanding the themes of identity and human behavior at the heart of the unit. 

Teaching a text that includes racist slurs, derogatory words, or anachronistic language can elicit fear and anxiety in educators. As educators, we know that unless we prepare to address language with intention and care, we risk causing harm and creating inhospitable classroom environments where students may feel like they do not belong and where they cannot learn. Some racist and dehumanizing terms, such as the n-word, have the power to destabilize a classroom environment if they are encountered without adequate preparation or groundwork. In her talk “Why It’s So Hard to Talk About the ‘N’ Word,” Dr. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor says: “I hear from students that when the word is said during a lesson without discussion and context, it poisons the entire classroom environment; the trust between student and teacher is broken” (11.31). Such terms can also make students who belong to the targeted groups feel uncomfortable and singled out. In her talk, Dr. Stordeur Pryor goes on to note: “My Black students tell me that when the word is spoken or quoted in class, they feel like a giant spotlight is shining on them” (12.32). 

The dehumanizing power and loaded history of the n-word cannot be ignored, nor can the impact it can have on students if not handled sensitively. We advise against speaking this word out loud in the classroom, but if it appears in texts or resources that are being used, it is necessary to acknowledge it, understand its problematic nature, and set guidelines for students when reading aloud or quoting from the text (e.g., have students say “the n-word” when they encounter the word spelled out in full in a text). Otherwise, the presence of this word might both harm students and distract them from an open discussion on a particular topic. If you realize that you will be asking students to hear, process, and discuss passages with dehumanizing language on a regular basis, however, it is important to reflect on the purpose of such texts and the cost to students’ emotional well-being.

The Choices in Little Rock unit provides students with the opportunity to explore themes of democracy, identity, and racism in American history. Students will also encounter texts and stories that may be emotionally challenging. For this reason, if you have already created a classroom contract, we highly recommend reviewing it with students at the beginning of the unit. We consider classroom contracts to be “living documents” that can be returned to or altered as needed. Don’t hesitate to return to the contract with students to reinforce the guidelines and norms that they have agreed to as necessary.

The Choices in Little Rock unit covers a broad swath of history, including efforts to institute segregation beginning in the Reconstruction era, generations before the Brown decision and the Little Rock desegregation crisis of 1957. Consider using the handout Timeline of Events Relevant to Little Rock School Desegregation as a reference for students to help them keep track of important events.

The terms ”desegregation” and “integration” are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings, and this unit differentiates between them. While it is not necessary for your students to understand the difference, it may be useful for you to understand how this unit defines the two words. 

“Desegregation” refers to the efforts of institutions to remove the legal framework of segregation. According to John A. Powell, director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, in the context of desegregating public schools, that work is limited to merging racial populations and “requires students of the non-dominant group (most often non-white) to assimilate into the school and culture created for and controlled by the dominant group.” ¹ In short, desegregation refers to efforts aimed at eliminating the separation of groups based on race or other characteristics.

On the other hand, “integration” is the process that may happen during or after desegregation. Integration is more than the merging of racial populations; rather, it is a condition in which values of equality, fairness, and inclusion are created and experienced. According to Gary Orfield, codirector of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA, integration in the school setting “is the effort to create schools with successful diverse faculties, real diversity among students, with policies and practices deeply committed to equal status and fair treatment for all students; integration involves respect and teaching about the backgrounds of the different groups in the school and community.” ² In short, integration is a condition in which equal coexistence is maintained after segregation has been dismantled. 

• 1John A. Powell, “A New Theory of Integrated Education: True Education,” in School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back?, ed. John Boger and Gary Orfield (University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 282.
• 2Gary Orfield and Ryan Pfleger, “The Unfinished Battle for Integration in a Multiracial America—from Brown to Now,” The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (UCLA, 2024), 23.