LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — It's been 66 years since nine Black students walked through the doors at Little Rock Central High School for their official first day. The turbulent year of 1957 and the actions by those involved would go down in history.
But what many may not know is the year that followed is arguably just as important to help integrate the schools.
The "Lost Year" is what it came to be known as when more than 3,600 high schoolers received no public education for a full school year.
While it was a long year, it was only the beginning of what was to come for integration in Little Rock and for those who supported it, including Adolphine Fletcher Terry.
She was born a woman of privilege to a prominent Little Rock family. Terry was the daughter of a Confederate soldier and her younger brother was the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Gould Fletcher Jr.
Terry would go on to graduate from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, which her granddaughter, Susan Adolphine Terry-Borné said was unusual back in the day.
"We kind of think that's what makes her story so compelling because she did not hide that," Borné said. "And throughout her life, she was very supportive of liberal and progressive causes even though she was a daughter of a Confederate veteran, and we really admire her for that."
Borné said at a young age, she knew her grandmother to be encouraging and the grandparent who enjoyed special traditions like gathering her family in her home on Christmas Eve.
Others knew her for also leading a vocal women's group, the first to speak publicly against then-Governor Orval Faubus and segregationists.
“Many of the things she did, I did not learn about until later in life, especially the events surrounding Central High School and the Women's Emergency Committee," Borné said.
Fueled by the 1957 "Crisis at Central High," Adolophine formed the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), with Vivion Brewer and Velma Powell, weeks before voters passed a ballot measure to close all four public high schools in Little Rock for the 1958-59 academic school year.
“The story is she put on her white gloves and her hat and she went to see Harry Ashmore, who was one of the editors at the Arkansas Gazette. She had a very close relationship with Ned Heiskell, they were the same age and Mr. Heiskell owned the paper," Borné said. "That's when she said, 'Well, the men had failed, it's time to call out the women.'”
This home at 411 E. Seventh St., known as the Pike-Fletcher-Terry House, would become a space where the need for change led to conversations. The walls of the antebellum home gave many women in the committee the security to meet discretely.
“Women at the time had only had the vote for a little over three decades. A handful of them had served in the Arkansas legislature. Not many of them held public office during this period, but they used their ability to organize women's clubs and took that skill and applied it to create the Women's Emergency Committee because they were great organizers," said Danielle Afsordeh, a community outreach archivist with the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.
Afsordeh said these women were great at building community consensus because they were used to having no power. So they leveraged their skills in community organizing to make sure that the students will be able to return to the classroom.
For a year, WEC rallied their communities on the importance of having the city's high schools open.
The women successfully passed a resolution to get the Little Rock School Board to vote on renewing the contracts of administrators and teachers.
However, the board did not renew contracts for staff members who supported Black and White students learning together.
Their next job, removing segregationist board members with the help of voters and other community groups.
And they did, getting three board members recalled.
“They cared deeply about public education being accessible to students here and without the committee who knows how long those schools would have remained closed," Afsordeh said.
Although the schools reopened in August of 1959, WEC continued their work for highlighting political, social, and educational issues until disbanding in 1963. The women involved would then continue through other organizations and groups.
Adolphine, who was already in her 70s during this time, did not slow down her efforts of being a trailblazer involved in several institutions.
“It seems to me that education, and schools and libraries, those were the integration. Those were the things that she was most interested in," Borné said. "She worked to integrate the YWCA here in town, she worked to integrate the public library system and she served on that board for 40 years.”
Afsordeh said the City of Little Rock approved millage funding, which came as a result of Terry's work, passing a legislative act at the state level to provide millage funding for public libraries.
"To honor that and her work in 40 years on the board, the Central Arkansas Library System, which became a larger system in 1978, after merging with the county decided to name a building in her honor," Afsordeh said.
Borné said if Terry could see our society and politics today, she would agree that we’re still fighting the same battles we have for generations.
“She would still be expressing her opinion and trying to be a change-maker in those areas. And in libraries, access to libraries and books, and, you know, access for all types of people in our community to be accepted," Borné said. "Those are the things I think that she would still be fighting some of the shenanigans that are going on these days.”
Borné said she channels her inner Adolphine Fletcher Terry often, and her entire family does as they remember the strong and fearless woman Terry was.
Her family's hope is that her efforts will always shine a light on what’s important to them, this community, and its future.
“She really taught us by example, that you know, that's just the way you live and you're not gonna hide things behind the curtain," Borné said.
To read more on Adolphine Fletcher Terry and the WEC, click here.