religions Article “Remember Little Rock”: Racial (In)Justice and the Shaping of Contemporary White Evangelicalism Tammy Heise Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA;
[email protected] 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. Keywords: white southern evangelicalism; white supremacy; civil rights; Brown decision; Little Rock crisis; conservative political activism 1. Introduction In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court shocked many white southerners by ruling racial Citation: Heise, Tammy. 2021. segregation in public education unconstitutional. This decision—known as Brown v. Board “Remember Little Rock”: Racial of Education (Topeka)—finally acknowledged “separate educational facilities are inherently (In)Justice and the Shaping of unequal”. It also partially overruled the key legal justification for segregation established Contemporary White Evangelicalism. in the Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.1 In the modern south,