Editing Charleston, Arkansas (section)

==History==
Charleston was [[plat]]ted in 1870.<ref>{{cite book|title=History of Benton, Washington, Carroll, Madison, Crawford, Franklin, and Sebastian Counties, Arkansas|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5uwxAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA654|year=1889|publisher=Higginson Book Company|page=654}}</ref>

In 1954, Charleston was the first school district in the former [[Confederate States of America|Confederate States]] to implement school integration in response to ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]''. On July 27, 1954, the school board, including President Howard Madison Orsburn, George Hairston, Archibald Schaffer, Herbert Shumate, and Homer Keith, unanimously voted to "disband the Colored School and admit the Colored children into the grade and high school when classes open for the fall semester." Accordingly, when the schools opened on August 23, 11 black children were in attendance alongside 480 whites.<ref name="eoa deseg">{{cite web|title=Desegregation of Charleston Schools|url=http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=730|publisher=Encyclopedia of Arkansas|access-date=January 4, 2018}}</ref> School Superintendent Woodie Haynes made an agreement with the local press not to cover the event, and stonewalled any outside reporters that asked questions.<ref name="First Stand">{{cite web|last1=Appleby|first1=David|title=Hoxie - The First Stand|url=http://newsreel.org/video/HOXIE-THE-FIRST-STAND|access-date=January 4, 2018}}</ref> The decision to integrate had financial benefits, as the district had been paying a considerable sum to transport black high school students to [[Fort Smith, Arkansas|Fort Smith]], and were able to close the old [[Rosenwald school]]. During the Civil Rights era, the city was among a few Southern cities which surprisingly showed little resistance to integration.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.swtimes.com/sports/20180213/barclay-charleston-saw-little-integration-resistance#:~:text=On%20Aug.,in%20the%20state%20in%201954.|title=Barclay: Charleston saw little integration resistance|first=Leland|last=Barclay|publisher=Southwest Times Record|date=February 13, 2018|access-date=September 13, 2020}}{{Dead link|date=November 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> Charleston suffered some discrimination from other schools and the state; many schools refused to play football against them and the band was denied the opportunity to play in some band competitions. In 1961, the first two black students to graduate from Charleston were Barbara (Williams) Dotson and Joe Ferguson.<ref name="eoa deseg" />