Money Pumped Into Little Rock Site
An old gas station with shattered windows and peeling yellow paint began a transformation Monday into a visitor’s center for one of the primary battlefields in the fight against segregation.
The dilapidated building across from Little Rock Central High School will be restored to the way it looked in 1957, the year that nine black students were allowed into the all-white high school.
More than $700,000 will be spent to put vintage gas pumps where rusted pipes now stand, replace broken corrugated tiles on the rooftop and turn a grimy interior into a plush center ready to show a slice of history.
“Having this on Presidents Day is significant because it was a president that ultimately let those students in,” Gov. Mike Huckabee said at the groundbreaking. “Little Rock needs to make what was a very unpleasant memory into a reminder that something like that will never happen again.”
Gov. Orval Faubus claimed he was acting in the public interest when he deployed National Guard troops to keep black students from entering the school in September 1957.
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