HISTORY MINUTE

The case surrounding the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock still draws intense interest even 60 years after the demonstrations and legal cases have long since faded away. While the protests and surrounding the high school riveted the attention of the general public, the legal action behind the scenes was shaping the events. Days of hearings were held in numerous courts at the state and federal level. Some of the most important court decisions that ended the case were from a federal judge based in Fargo, North Dakota, Judge Ronald Norwood Davies.

Davies was born in northwestern Minnesota in 1904. His father was a newspaper editor. The family moved to Grand Forks, a city of less than 20,000 residents on the North Dakota-Minnesota border, in 1917. He graduated from his own Central High School in Grand Forks in 1922 and graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1927. He enrolled at the prestigious Georgetown University Law School in Washington, DC, earning his law degree in 1930.

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