---
title: Crowd at the Arkansas State Capitol protesting school integration, with signs reading "Race mixing is Communism," Little Rock, Arkansas
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/race-mixing-is-communism-1959/
description: A speaker addresses a crowd at the Arkansas State Capitol on 20 August 1959 at a rally against the integration of Little Rock's schools.
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![Crowd at the Arkansas State Capitol protesting school integration, with signs reading "Race mixing is Communism," Little Rock, Arkansas](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/race-mixing-is-communism-1959.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/race-mixing-is-communism-1959.jpg)

# Crowd at the Arkansas State Capitol protesting school integration, with signs reading "Race mixing is Communism," Little Rock, Arkansas

A speaker addresses a crowd at the Arkansas State Capitol on 20 August 1959 at a rally against the integration of Little Rock's schools. Hand-lettered signs read 'Race mixing is Communism' and 'Stop the race mixing', and American flags are held above the crowd. The signs attach a high-stigma Cold War word to school integration, and the flags lend national symbolism to the protest.

- **Date:** August 20, 1959
- **Period:** [Cold War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=cold-war)
- **Made by:** Segregationist protesters at the Arkansas State Capitol, Little Rock
- **Region:** [North America](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=north-america)
- **Country:** [United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-states)
- **Medium:** [Photograph](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=photograph)
- **Issuer type:** [Movement](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=movement)
- **Regime:** [Eisenhower Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=eisenhower-administration)
- **Leader:** [Dwight D. Eisenhower](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=dwight-d-eisenhower)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Persuade or win support](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=persuade-support)
- **Themes:** [Race and ethnicity](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=race-ethnicity), [Elections and party politics](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=elections-party-politics)
- **Event:** [Little Rock Integration Crisis](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#event=little-rock-integration-crisis)
- **Techniques:** [Semantic hijacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/semantic-hijack/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021792152/), retrieved September 28, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain (U.S. News & World Report photo; LoC: No known restrictions on publication) Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
RACE
MIXING
[illegible — smaller text below]

STOP
THE RACE
MIXING
[illegible — smaller text below]
```

The only file committed to this entry is a 150x101px LoC thumbnail (the item's small preview image), so the two nearest hand-lettered signs are legible only for their large top lines; smaller text beneath each, and a third sign further right, are too low-resolution to transcribe. A higher-resolution version may exist at the LoC item page (source.pageUrl) but was not fetched for this entry.

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