“Remember Little Rock”: Racial (In)Justice and the Shaping of Contemporary White Evangelicalism

Abstract

In 1957, Little Rock became a flash point for conflict over the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown decision. This article examines Little Rock as a religious symbol for white southerners— especially white southern evangelicals—as they sought to exercise their self-appointed roles as cultural guardians to devise competing, but ultimately complementary, strategies to manage social change to limit desegregation and other civil rights expansions for African Americans. This history reveals how support for segregation helped to convert white southern evangelicals to conservative political activism in this period.