FAYETTEVILLE, ARKANSAS -- A documentary film about one of the earliest, most important and least remembered school integration battles in the South will be shown at the University of Arkansas Reynolds Center Auditorium on Monday, October 20 at 7 p.m. "Hoxie: The First Stand" was produced by University of Memphis Professor of Communication David Appleby, who will be on hand to present the film and to answer questions following the presentation. The film's screening is made possible by the Lemke Department of Journalism, the Department of History, KUAF Public Radio, the Center for Arkansas and Regional Studies in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the University Programs Cinema Arts Committee. A reception will follow the event, which is free and open to the public.

In the summer of 1955, the school board of a small, rural Arkansas town voluntarily desegregated its schools, becoming the first in the Delta to do so. The newly formed White Citizens' Councils saw this as a test for Southern resistance to the Supreme Court's desegregation decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education and soon descended on the town. They organized the locals to try to force the board to rescind its order, but the five members and the school’s superintendent stood their ground.

With the NAACP helping to keep the black families united, the board sought an injunction against the segregationists. Eventually, they drew an extremely reluctant federal government into a case that nullified state segregation laws. Segregationist leaders were so furious over the loss that they turned on Governor Faubus in the next primary, forcing him out of his previously moderate stance and setting up the 1957 confrontation in Little Rock.

This is a story of common men, disturbed by the Jim Crow culture they had been raised in, who saw a chance to do the right thing and did it at great risk. It's a story of black families who, although they never sought integration, were courageous and steadfast when it was thrust upon them. And it's a story that had nearly been forgotten.

David Appleby has been making documentary films for almost thirty years. After doing his undergraduate work in sociology and completing graduate work in film and television at Temple University in the 1970's, he began teaching at the University of Memphis, where he immediately began producing films on regional subjects. His films have aired on PBS and A&E and are distributed nationally. Mr. Appleby continues to live and work in Memphis.

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