Yesterday was a big day of holiday parades and celebrations, but one gathering commanded the community’s attention for all the wrong reasons. While families were downtown enjoying floats and lights, a group of modern white supremacists held their own DIY parade at one of the most symbolically charged sites in our nation’s history.
The contrast is not accidental. It is instructive. Let me say this clearly. My goal in talking about what happened was not to be casual about it. It was to show that this is a continuation of the same conversation I beat the drum about every single day. You should not need to see literal Nazis on the street to recognize the ideology. I see their shadows in our policies, our school lines, and our neighborhood narratives every day already. Seeing these images side by side is a reminder that history is not behind us. It is beside us. It is shaping the ground we walk on in real time.
Little Rock’s Past Is Never Just the Past
This is Central High. The same building where mobs once tried to stop nine Black children from entering. The same building held up as a symbol of “progress,” even though the city went right back to the same script once the cameras left. And the same city that entered the Lost Year the very next school year, closing every single one of its public high schools rather than integrate. That choice did not disappear. It evolved.
The faces change. The slogans update. The outfits get a rebrand. But the ideology is the same one that shaped the Lost Year, the same one that carved our housing patterns, the same one that built the school boundaries we still have now, and the same one that shows up quietly in our current policy landscape.
It is the reason Central High, despite its identity as a site of progress, sits in what is now a predominately Black neighborhood. My neighborhood. We cannot be so deeply shocked that white supremacists felt comfortable walking through a space where their ideology has been reinforced by decades of community action, choices, and avoidance. Central High being surrounded by a segregated neighborhood created through white flight in the backdrop of school integration is the historical thread. It is not separate from the story. It is the story.
The Present Is Not Separate From the Past
When we sever the connections between the past and the present to ease our discomfort or our shame, we set ourselves up for moments of hypocritical moral outrage. We pretend the ideology just appeared in a UHaul dressed in red and black, instead of recognizing how it has been allowed to operate in quieter forms all along.
That is why tying these historical threads matters.
1957 is not a chapter you visit on a field trip (although you DO need to visit Little Rock Central High Historic Site). It is a blueprint for how Little Rock has repeatedly chosen separation over investment.
You do not need mobs in the street when the LEARNS Act and its voucher expansion can do the same work quietly. You do not need signs and shouting when modern segregation shows up through neighborhood demographics, enrollment drift, underfunded neighborhood schools, and the slow siphoning of resources from the neighbors and neighborhoods who need them most.
If Yesterday Shook You, Let It Move You Toward Learning
Learn more about Central High beyond the famous photos.
Learn about the Lost Year and what happened after the headlines faded.
Learn how Little Rock re-segregated its schools once the national cameras were gone.
Learn how policy choices today echo choices made then.
And Then Support the People Who Live Here Now
Support the neighbors who walk and bike past this building every day.
Support the kids in the schools that deserve more than nostalgia and neglect.
Support the work rooted in feeding families, stabilizing lives, and building community joy right here in real time.
Support the incredible staff who work to preserve and share our history and who persisted through the recent shutdown.
Hate groups came for a photo. We are here for the long work.
Community care has outlasted hatred before. It will again.
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Rocktown Realness is the ongoing work of growing joy, care, and connection in Little Rock. We meet needs quickly, feed families consistently, and build community systems that make life better for the people and ideas who are too often left out of the story.
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