Arkansas brings Missouri racial advocate CS1950 to campus

As part of the A+ Honors College Lecture Series, the University of Arkansas has invited Payton Head, also known as the Concerned Student 1950 who sparked a movement on the University of Missouri campus a few years ago. Details of the lecture are here.



As a flagship campus for racial equality, Arkansas is no stranger to hosting thought leaders on race.

Fayetteville High School, part of the largest and oldest school district in the state, was widely recognized for being the first in the former Confederacy to integrate in 1954.

Of course, these officials had learned from the successful admission of Silas Hunt to the University of Arkansas Law School in 1948. Hunt was the first black student to be admitted for graduate or professional studies at any all-white university in the former Confederacy.




Today, there is a statue honoring Hunt's life and legacy

When it came to integrating Little Rock schools, it was a legendary Fayetteville educator, Virgil Blossom, who proposed the Blossom Plan to integrate, despite the prominent Central Arkansas voices who wanted to keep LR segregated.

But as we know, our neighbors to the north have not been as fortunate as Arkansas. Racial harmony is a journey, not a destination, and Arkansas has worked as hard to remain out of the news as most Missouri posters have worked to tell this board how backward the states of the old Confederacy are.

However, their perception differs greatly from reality.






It would be nice if Missouri listened to their own homegrown activists to solve their own racial problems. We shouldn't have these problems staining America in the year 2018.

Despite having designated "safe spaces", Missouri is not ready to have a conversation. So until they're ready to have a conversation, the University of Arkansas will host that dialog for them.