cover image Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation

Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation

Elizabeth Jacoway, . . Free Press, $30 (477pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-9719-6

Although the ingredients for a groundbreaking account of the 1957 integration of Little Rock's Central High School are here, this account by the niece of the city's superintendent of schools falls short of its promise. A Little Rock native who went to a different school during the crisis, Jacoway draws on more than 50 interviews of her own, which include all the major players, along with dozens of interviews conducted by others, and private and public manuscripts. But the result is a numbing mass of detail that entombs the drama and its personae. The oral histories add verisimilitude, but the day-by-day, even hour-by-hour, detail is frequently tedious. The total effect is, curiously, a vindication of Gov. Orval Faubus and a reproach of journalist Harry Ashmore and the author's uncle, Superintendent Virgil Blossom. A daring subtext, that the root of the crisis was "a white fear of miscegenation," frames the book in preface and afterword. Jacoway's insight that "female questioning could somehow threaten the established order" also makes her particularly attentive to the roles women played in causing and calming the crisis. The result is an informative but dully written book. (Jan.)