Arkansas' Capital on the River — the Central High School National Historic Site, the Clinton Presidential Library, and the River Market
Little Rock is Arkansas' state capital and the city where the modern civil rights movement made one of its defining stands — the 1957 Little Rock Central High School crisis, when Governor Orval Faubus deployed the National Guard to block nine Black students from integrating the school, and President Eisenhower responded by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and sending the 101st Airborne to escort the students inside, is the most direct federal-versus-state confrontation of the integration era. Central High School is now a National Historic Site, still an active high school, with a visi…
Little Rock was founded in 1820 at a small rock outcropping on the Arkansas River — the first solid ground encountered on the south bank after miles of swampy bottomland — and became Arkansas's state capital in 1821, while Arkansas was still a territory. The city was a Union stronghold during the Civil War after September 1863, serving as the seat of a Reconstructionist state government. The 1957 desegregation crisis put the city's name on every front page in the world; the nine Black students who integrated Central High School — the Little Rock Nine — were each awarded the Congressional Gold…