Arkansas was a segregated state.
Although segregation in Arkansas legally ended in Arkansas after the Supreme Court's 154 Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
Although the true desegregation was a protracted process, with major events such as the 1957 Little Rock Nine crisis that highlighted the challenges and the resistance to the ruling.
Although legal segregation ended in the year of 1954 in Arkansas, the schools across Arkansas, including in Little Rock Arkansas, faced ongoing struggles and slow progress in achieving meaningful integration over the following years as well as following decades.
The board decision in May of 1954 had found that racial segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional.
And although Arkansas gained national attention with the 1957 integration crisis at Little Rock Central High School, the stories of schools and districts across the state that had integrated before the year of 1957 have also gone largely unheard.
Little Rock Arkansas still remains sharply segregated.
The suburbs of Little Rock Arkansas along the western end of the highway are also still mostly white, although in the core of the city of Little Rock the highway still serves as a racial dividing line.