A U.S. News & World Report photograph, now at the Library of Congress, of a 20 August 1959 rally at the Arkansas State Capitol against integrating Little Rock's schools. Hand-lettered signs read "Race mixing is Communism" and "Stop the race mixing," under American flags.
What the photograph shows
A speaker stands before a crowd at the state capitol. Flags are held up over the heads. Two hand-lettered signs face the camera. Their large top lines are legible; the smaller writing under each, and a third sign further right, are not readable at the size the archive holds.
RACE MIXING [smaller text illegible]
STOP THE RACE MIXING [smaller text illegible]
Who made the signs, and who made the picture
The signs were made by segregationist protesters, private citizens, not by any government office. The picture was taken for U.S. News & World Report and is held in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, which lists no known restrictions on publication. FRAME tags it as openly sourced: the speakers were who they said they were.
What was wrong with the message
Sending Black and white children to the same public school is not communism. The sign attaches the most feared political word of 1959 to a question of equal treatment by the state, so that the question never has to be argued. FRAME calls this semantic hijacking. The flags do similar work, lending the national symbol to a demand that a public school system keep sorting its citizens by race. The demand was wrong, and the label was false.
The rally itself was protected speech. A crowd at a capitol with signs is the First Amendment working, even when the signs are ugly. The constitutional answer is more speech and equal protection under law, not a ban on the crowd. A 1958 Berryman cartoon drew the Arkansas governor of the same fight. Five years before the rally, a USIA poster abroad printed "All men are created equal" under Lincoln's name. Both belong to the same country's record. The Citizens' Councils case study discusses this rally and the state money and power behind the Councils.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Crowd at the Arkansas State Capitol protesting school integration, with signs reading "Race mixing is Communism," Little Rock, Arkansas, 20 August 1959.
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. News & World Report photograph, loc.gov/item/2021792152. Rights as recorded: no known restrictions on publication.
