On August 31, 1956 segregationists gathered at the Mansfield High School to prevent African American students from registering for the upcoming school year. The same day Governor Allan Shivers dispatched Texas Rangers to Mansfield as a sign to…
Governor Allan Shivers ordered Texas Rangers to be dispatched in an effort to maintain order at the school as segregationists gathered to protest the federal court order to integrate students in 1956. The National Association for the Advancement of…
As a leader in the NAACP, Dallas native A. Maceo Smith helped to form the Texas State Conference of Branches in 1937. This alliance between Texas chapters helped the organization revitalize in the during and after World War II.
An effigy hangs above the entrance to Mansfield High School as students file in the building on August 30, 1956. The effigy was hung as a protest to integration efforts in Mansfield. The effigy remained for several days.
This photo - taken the month of the Mansfield desegregation crisis in 1956 - depicts a microcosm of Jim Crow-era segregation. In addition to separate water fountains, blacks and whites were separated in bus seating, theater seating, restaurants,…
Jim Crow laws marginalized African Americans by denying them access to private businesses and public facilities, creating "separate but equal" conditions. For example, many black Americans were forced to eat in the back of some establishments or not…
Mansfield author John Howard Griffin, who wrote the book "Black Like Me," holds a Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper, which includes a photo of an effigy someone hung of him. Griffin spent most of his life studying racial equality. In "Black Like Me"…
Five African American students who planned to enroll in Mansfield High School stand in front of a Mansfield Independent School District bus. Students include Gracie Smith, Hattie Neal, Floyd Moody, John Hicks, and Charles Moody. The segregated school…
During the protest against desegregation at Mansfield High School, John Pyles held a baby alligator as a warning to any African American who appeared on the school grounds that they would be "gator bait."
A car painted with racial slurs is parked near Mansfield High School on August 30, 1956. Several hundred white citizens protested the registration of black students at the school. The protest was in response to the decision in the lawsuit of…