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Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation | 
 enlarge | Author: Elizabeth Jacoway
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 623929
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.4 x 1.6
Dewey Decimal Number: 379.2630976773
ASIN: B000WPQH6E
Publication Date: January 9, 2007
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Product Description
In September 1957, the nation was transfixed by nine black students attempting to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in the wake of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. Governor Orval Faubus had defied the city's integration plan by calling out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school. Newspapers across the nation ran front-page photographs of whites, both students and parents, screaming epithets at the quiet, well-dressed black children. President Eisenhower reluctantly deployed troops from the 101st Air-borne, both outside and inside the school. Integration proceeded, but the turmoil of Little Rock had only just begun. Public schools were soon shut down for a full year. Black students endured outrageous provocation by white classmates. Governor Faubus's popularity skyrocketed, while the landmark case Cooper v. Aaron worked its way to the Supreme Court and eventually paved the way for the integration of the south. Betsy Jacoway was a Little Rock student just two years younger than the youngest of the Little Rock Nine. Her "Uncle Virgil" was Superintendent of Schools Virgil Blossom. Congressman Brooks Hays was an old family friend, and her "Uncle Dick" was Richard Butler, the lawyer who argued Cooper v. Aaron before the Supreme Court. Yet, at the time, she was cocooned away from the controversy in a protective shell that was typical for white southern "good girls." Only in graduate school did she begin to question the foundations of her native world, and her own distance from the controversy. Turn Away Thy Son is the product of thirty years of digging behind the conventional account of the crisis, interviewing whites and blacks, officials and students, activists and ordinary citizens. A tour de force of history and memory, it is also a brilliant, multifaceted mirror to hold up to America today. She knows what happened to the brave black students once they got inside the doors of the school. She knows how the whites' fear of "race mixing" drove many locals to extremes of anger, paranoia, and even violence. She knows that Orval Faubus was only a reluctant segregationist, and that her own cousin's timid tokenism precipitated the crisis. Above all, Turn Away Thy Son shows in vivid detail why school desegregation was the hottest of hot-button issues in the Jim Crow south. In the deepest recesses of the southern psyche, Jacoway encounters the fear of giving black men sexual access to white women. The truth about Little Rock differs in many ways from the caricature that emerged in the press and in many histories -- but those differences pale in comparison to the fundamental driving force behind the story. Turn Away Thy Son is a riveting, heartbreaking, eye-opening book.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Best Book on the Subject, Even Better than mine!! January 20, 2008
A lifetime's work shows in this excellent history of the Little Rock desegregation crisis. The superb writing and in-depth research make this a great read. I would differ with the emphasis of her general thesis about the role of protecting Southern womanhood, but this is niggling. What is important is that Betsy has written the definitive story of Little Rock's sad time and the first chapter of the history of modern desegregation confrontations in America.
After nearly five decades, enlightenment at last July 31, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I attended Little Rock Central High School as a sophomore in the 1957-58 school year, and during the intervening five decades I have often attempted to make sense of the bewildering events that occurred at my school then and that gained such massive international attention. After all of these years, a talented and meticulous historian has finally created the definitive history of this crucial episode in recent American life. Drawing upon her exhaustive research of the primary documents and by conducting a huge number of interviews with most of the principal participants in the Central High crisis, Elizabeth Jacoway has written the book that should achieve recognition as the single work requiring citation whenever a future historian undertakes a serious examination of the integration of Central High. In this volume readers will encounter the naivete, bumbling ineptitude, treachery, malevolence, sporadic acts of grace and heroism, or misguided policies and decisions of so many of the major community, state, and national leaders and officials of the 1950's. Congratulations to Professor Jacoway for possessing the dedication, courage, and persistence necessary to produce this seminal work of history.
Charles Chappell
Professor of English
Hendrix College
Conway, Arkansas
Anatomy of a Train Wreck July 19, 2007
This wonderful piece of scholarship is not in keeping with our time. Today, we are asked to look to crack-pot talking heads on television who are experts-on-nothing with opinions on everything, and who think every issue can be reduced to an eight-second sound bite, plus three more seconds for the personal insult. This incredible work is nothing like that. Dr. Jacoway approaches the subject matter like the trained historian that she is: fairly, dispassionately, and factually. Her uncle is a key player, and even he gets no pass. This is the story of a train wreck - the Little Rock desegregation crisis. The characters are huge. There is Harry Ashmore, editor of the editorial page of the Arkansas Gazette, who was always the darling of Little Rock's goat cheese liberals, but who in fact was self-important, self-congratulatory, and self-absorbed. When he wasn't editorializing, he was giving speeches to Democratic Party groups, conduct which would be considered appalling by what little passes as journalistic standards today. There is Virgil Blossom, school superintendent (and the author's uncle) who comes across as a nervous and manic Mr. Whipple of please-don't-squeeze-the-Charmin fame. There is Congressman Brooks Hays, trying very hard to be the peace maker between Faubus and Eisenhower, but who in fact was unsuccessful in doing so, and accordingly, had to resort to making it up as he went along. There is the Establishment, school board members and attorneys, all claiming to be doing the right thing, but some of whom had noses so high in the air they would drown in a drizzle. There is Jim Johnson, a lieutenant of Gerald L.K. Smith, and an unreconstructed racist who, along with his wife, had more in common with Juan and Eva Peron than main-stream white middle class Americana. There is U.S. District Judge John Miller whose ex parte communications with the school district attorneys would get him in serious ethical trouble by today's standards. And then, there is Orval Eugene Faubus. I have often characterized Faubus as the Darth Vadar of Southern politics. This book brings that image home in a more authentic way than I had ever imagined. It reinforces the point made by Roy Reed in his magnificent biography, that Faubus's journey to the dark side was uncomplicated and breathtakingly political. Without pointing fingers, the author reports that Faubus accused Blossom and others of "double-crossing" him in publicly down-playing the facts and circumstances of the "crisis" and the extent of potential violence, thereby failing to give Faubus cover. Whether as a consequence of their public views or whether it was strictly retaliatory to gain political advantage (my personal view), or whether for some other reason, the author does not say. To do so would be an attempt to read the mind of a mastermind of politics. But,the author reports that the next thing that happened, quite literally, was Faubus's calling out the National Guard. The rest, as they say, is history. But not quite. Eisenhower sent in the 101 Airborne Division, the Little Rock Nine were escorted into the front door of Central High, and the rest is history. Well, not quite. A year later, the schools didn't open at all. Faubus was elected to a third term in a campaign uncharacteristically filled with race hatred. I say uncharacteristic because in '54 and '56, he had run as the liberal populist reformer, accused by his opponent of being a communist, with Ashmore as his chief water carrier and speech writer. Ashmore took a leave of absence from the Gazette to serve as Adlai Stevenson's spinmeister in '56. Faubus headed the Arkansas delegation to the convention, and would not deliver Arkansas's support to Stevenson on the first ballot. Ashmore remained bitter toward Faubus for years after that, and the author invites speculation, but does not opine herself, that the resentment may have been the reason for the "Ashmore-Gazette" version of events at Central High.
This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the history of the American civil rights movement. As a liberal Democrat, I had difficulty with some of the material - not because I didn't think the material was true, but because I knew in my heart and mind that it was true. But there is nothing here for the conservative, either. Those who want to go back to a time when "everybody was good" and American values were "held high" should read this book. Segregation, racial discrimination, bigotry, and hatred are not American values. There are no conservative heroes, and very few liberal heroes (Daisy Bates, Elizabeth Eckford, Wiley Branton). In the aftermath of this train wreck, bodies are strewn up and down the track. It's very bloody. History is that way sometimes.
 A MISSED OPPORTUNITY March 30, 2007
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I am impressed with the depth of research, and I think Ms. Jacoway writes rather well. Given the extensive research, this book COULD HAVE have stood as the definitive study of the Little Rock Central High School episode. (Several other books on the crisis were written by the key figures themselves, and thus are not detached overviews of the episode. Also, Roy Reed's superb book on Faubus, since it is a biography, does not deal with Central High in as much detail as this book does.) I say "could have" because Ms. Jacoway allows her personal feelings about her uncle, Virgil Blossom, and about Governor Faubus to lead her to paint a distorted picture. Superintendent Blossom certainly had his faults, which the book identifies and then greatly overemphasizes. As for Faubus, it is absurd to argue, as the author does, that betrayal by Blossom and others left him with no choice but to defy the federal courts. This is revisionist history and a fatal flaw in the book. There are other omissions and misunderstandings, but those could be forgiven were it not for the fatal flaw. An example: The author misunderstands the role of Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker. Since he was the ranking Army officer in Arkansas (he was in charge of Army Reserve units in the state), protocol dictated that he be the nominal commander of the 101st Airborne units sent to Little Rock. But he was purely a front man, not a decision-maker as the book suggests. Although the end of the book follows other key figures through the years after the Central High crisis, it amazingly fails to note the irony that ex-Gen. Walker helped lead the charge against federal marshals during the desegregation of Ole Miss in 1962.
The American Dream or the American Nightmare... March 11, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Even in politically-charged 2007, what Elizabeth Jacoway has written is an honest, behind-the-scenes look at one of the darkest periods of American history. This is a must read book, especially for African Americans, because it shows us why we should be steadfastly embracing educational and economic opportunities before us and not browbeating each other. Racism, segregation, etc., has left segments of our society forever scarred. "Turn Away Thy Son" is the American history that you won't get from a public school history book.
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