The past and future of Hall High School
The past and future of Hall High School HALL HIGH SCHOOL Brian Chilson
When Hall High School opened in 1957, it was part of a plan to forestall broad integration of the Little Rock School District. It was three years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, and the same year that would see the desegregation crisis unfold at Little Rock Central High.
Anticipating change under Brown, Superintendent Virgil Blossom and the School Board opened the all-black Horace Mann High School in what was mostly black East Little Rock in 1956. Hall was built a couple of blocks west of University, in what was then an affluent white neighborhood in West Little Rock.