LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Workers remodeling an old dime store uncovered a relic found most often in museums and history books: the words “WHITE” and “COLORED” painted over spots where water fountains once hung.
“Well, I was pretty amazed,” said Charles Moenning, head of construction on a project to turn the old S.H. Kress store into loft apartments and retail space. “I have never seen anything like that in my life, in person, rather.”
The black letters stand out from the beige plaster wall, recalling the days when segregation ruled the South. Blacks and whites were kept apart in schools, transportation and other public places.
Mayor Jim Dailey wants the signs preserved in a museum, calling them “a dramatic reminder of a world that we don’t want to go back to.”
“I used to shop downtown when I was a kid, and I used to remember all of those signs,” Dailey said Friday as he dropped by the store.
Kress built the store on Main Street in 1943 and it remained a five-and-dime until the 1960s, when a drugstore occupied the space until the 1990s. Developer Frieda Nelson Tirado recently bought the vacant three-story building.
Demolition workers clearing the basement for parking spaces were ripping out old walls about two weeks ago when someone noticed the lettering. On Thursday, Moenning helped workers remove the last of the material covering the words. He agreed during the mayor’s visit to save the wall from demolition.
Marks on the wall suggest the water fountains were once separated by a partition.
Integration arrived in Little Rock slowly in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1957, a group of black teenagers faced down a mob to integrate Little Rock Central High School.
While the city is perhaps best known for the Little Rock Nine, integration actually started a bit earlier, said Laura Miller, a historian at the Central High School National Historic Site.
“I believe it was right around 1955 and 1956 when representatives from the NAACP started asking downtown store owners to desegregate water fountains and things like that,” she said. “And they did, quietly, without telling their white customers.”
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