Editorial: Little Rock Moves On

When the Supreme Court ordered an end to racial segregation in public schools in 1954, there was no foretelling what its mandate for integration "with all deliberate speed" would come to mean. In Little Rock, Ark., the site in 1957 of one of the most explosive desegregation struggles, it has come to mean decades of litigation that may now be nearing an end.

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Last week, the state, three Little Rock-area school districts and two citizens groups agreed that it was time to phase out nearly $70 million a year in subsidies that have helped those districts achieve workable desegregation through methods like crosstown busing and the creation of magnet schools. The payments would end in 2018. A federal judge will hold a hearing in January on the fairness of the agreement.

Not everyone is satisfied with the quality of Little Rock's schools, especially in high-poverty minority neighborhoods. But the agreement may bring an end to one chapter in the long fight for racial equality, one that began with the school board's unanimous decision to enroll nine black students in Central High School and took a notorious turn when Gov. Orval Faubus decided to play to segregationist politics and mobilized the National Guard to block the students. Mob violence followed, persuading President Dwight Eisenhower to send federal troops to enforce the Supreme Court ruling and escort the students to class.

Ernest Green was the first black student to graduate from the high school — an event happily witnessed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had warned Mr. Eisenhower that any hesitation in Little Rock in the name of states' rights would "set the process of integration back 50 years." History grinds too slow on what "all deliberate speed" means, but the news from Little Rock provides hope that the nation can labor beyond its racist past.

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