“While this edited volume will appeal to devotees of Arkansas history, it would be a mistake to assume that its value is only to that audience. Editor Guy Lancaster, an award-winning historian, has written an impressive introduction and assembled ten well-written chapters, which cover most aspects of mob violence in the state as well as the Arkansas antilynching movement. … Lancaster’s edited collection is a welcome addition to the southern lynching literature…”
—Journal of Southern History, February 2019
“The school desegregation experiences of the Little Rock Nine have been extensively discussed, but far less attention has been granted to the students who followed them. LaVerne Bell-Tolliver’s collection of oral histories, The First Twenty-Five: An Oral History of the Desegregation of Little Rock’s Public Junior High Schools, aims to correct this absence through interviews with the students who desegregated the Little Rock, Arkansas, junior high schools in1961. Bell-Tolliver, herself one of these twenty-five students, wants to better understand her own history through an examination of the existing archival record and through conversations with the other pioneering students. … The interviews make up the deeply engaging core of the book. This section offers an invaluable trove of material for better understanding the varied experiences of the students on the front lines of desegregation. … This volume will be of interest to scholars of desegregation, education historians, and social workers and school administrators concerned with supporting marginalized children.”
—Journal of Southern History, February 2019