Resolution hails desegregation try

The House on Monday passed a resolution honoring the “North Little Rock Six,” a group of high school students who attempted to integrate North Little Rock’s schools in 1957.

The students’ names were Richard Lindsey, Gerald Persons, Harold Smith, Eugene Hall, Frank Henderson and William Henderson.

While the students’ attempt to desegregate North Little Rock High School occurred around the same time as the effort at Little Rock’s Central High School, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the event did not gain the same international recognition as what would later become known as the Little Rock crisis.

The North Little Rock students, like the Little Rock Nine, were similarly met with white protesters at the schoolhouse door, though a federal lawsuit to force integration was never filed on their behalf, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

The sponsor of the resolution to honor the North Little Rock students — Rep. Jamie Scott, D-North Little Rock — said that one of the students, Richard Lindsey, is her uncle.

North Little Rock’s public schools were not integrated until 1964.