Date of Award
4-24-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
First Advisor
Barclays Key
Abstract
This thesis challenges the dominant narrative of the Little Rock School Integration Crisis by recovering the hidden histories of families and siblings who made integration possible but have been systematically overlooked by historians. While existing scholarship focuses on the Little Rock Nine as individual heroes, this research demonstrates that integration was fundamentally a family crisis requiring collective decision-making, economic sacrifice, and multigenerational support networks. Through close reading of published memoirs, newspaper clippings, school board minutes, and original oral history interviews with Phyllis Brown and Dr. Sybil Jordan Hampton, this study reveals how approximately 200 eligible families were systematically reduced to nine through institutional screening processes designed to minimize integration. The research documents how families absorbed economic retaliation, siblings endured harassment and restricted freedoms, and extended family networks organized protection strategies that transformed homes into military fortresses. These findings demonstrate that children's agency emerged from family systems rather than despite them, directly challenging theoretical frameworks that study children's agency in isolation from family networks. The thesis includes a digital archive (lr9childrenandfamilies.com) that organizes materials by family networks rather than famous individuals, making these hidden histories permanently accessible through interactive timelines, family profiles, and an AI-powered chatbot. This methodology offers a replicable framework for recovering other hidden histories in which children's experiences and family impacts have been systematically under documented. By centering family networks as the primary unit of historical analysis, this research fundamentally reframes how we understand both the Little Rock crisis specifically and children's historical agency more broadly.
Recommended Citation
Adebanjo, Oluseyi Noah, "Preserving the Untold Stories: Leveraging Emerging Technologies (AI and Machine Learning) for Archiving Hidden Histories of Children and Families Impacted by the Little Rock School Integration Crisis" (2026). Theses and Dissertations. 1336.
https://research.ualr.edu/etd/1336
