FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Three new books from the University of Arkansas Press demonstrate the press’s long-time commitment to publishing important books in the field of civil rights history.

An Epitaph for Little Rock: A Fiftieth Anniversary Retrospective on the Central High Crisis (Paperback $17.95), edited by British historian John A. Kirk and with a foreword by Juan Williams, a senior correspondent for National Public Radio, is a collection of some of the very best essays about the crisis that have been published over the years in the University of Arkansas’s Arkansas Historical Quarterly. A comprehensive array of topics are explored, including the state, regional, national, and international dimensions of the crisis as well as local white and black responses to events, gender issues, politics, and law.

As Williams writes in his foreword: “The issues that combined so explosively in Little Rock in 1957 continue to roil American politics and law. That is why Americans continue to study what happened there for some insight into who we really are and where we are headed in this new century.”

With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education, a collection of essays edited by historians Brian J. Daugherity and Charles C. Bolton (paper $24.95), represents the first effort to provide a broad assessment of how well the Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared an end to segregated schools in the United States was implemented. A distinguished group of historians look at 12 different states from all over the country to see how well those states dealt with the court’s mandate to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.”

Historian Patricia Sullivan from the University of South Carolina says that this book “raises important questions about the broader thrust of the Civil Rights Movement and the nature of its achievements.” Daugherity, who teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University, will be giving a talk about the book at 4 p.m. May 24 at the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site’s Visitor Center. He will be joined by one of the book’s contributors, Johanna Miller Lewis, who teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Co-editor Charles C. Bolton teaches at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro.

Elizabeth Jacoway, a civil rights historian and resident of Newport, Ark., published her book about the Central High School crisis last year with a publisher in New York City. Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, The Crisis that Shocked the Nation is now being published in paperback by the University of Arkansas Press ($19.95). Jacoway, who lived in Little Rock during the crisis, focuses on the key people involved, including Gov. Orval Faubus, Daisy Bates, Little Rock Nine lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Austin Branton, and the students themselves to tell her story.

Famed documentary film director Ken Burns describes Turn Away Thy Son as “a mesmerizing and brave book, a story with complicated layers and meaning for all Americans, a heroic saga of progress and its consequences.” The Chicago Tribune’s review of the book noted the book’s “moving anecdotes and colorful characters,” while the Baltimore Sun’s review was impressed with how the book shed “new light on the role of women in the crisis.”

Barbara Jacoway will be a featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Arkansas Library Association to be held Oct. 5-7 at the John Q. Hammons Center in Rogers.