FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Fifty years after nine African American students walked through crowds under the protection of the 101^st Airborne to integrate Little Rock Central High, the University of Arkansas Press is publishing four books that address different aspects of this crucial event in U.S. history.

The books include a memoir and a biography, as well as a documentary history of the crisis and a look beyond Little Rock to the origins and legacies of the event.

The first book released, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir, recalls the events of the Little Rock school crisis in the voice of Daisy Bates. On Sept. 25, 1957, Bates, an official of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Arkansas, led the nine children into the school with the help of federal troops sent by President Dwight D. Eisenhower — the first time in 81 years that a president had dispatched troops to the South to protect the constitutional rights of black Americans. Her book, originally published in 1962, could not be found on most bookstore shelves and was widely banned throughout the South. The University of Arkansas Press brought the book back into print in 1988, and it won an American Book Award. It is being reprinted with a brand-new cover — an award-winning painting by John Deering — and a new forward by Clayborne Carson of Stanford University to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of the Little Rock school crisis.

University of Arkansas law professor Judith Kilpatrick has written a biography of Wiley Branton, who served as the lawyer for the students who integrated the Little Rock school system. Her book, There When We Needed Him: Wiley Austin Branton, Civil Rights Warrior, chronicles his representation of the Little Rock Nine in their efforts to integrate Central High. It traces his life from being one of the first black students at the University of Arkansas School of Law to serving as executive secretary of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Council on Equal Opportunity and serving as dean of Howard University Law School.

In the next book, Beyond Little Rock: The Origins and Legacies of the Central High Crisis, British historian John A. Kirk, one of the leading scholars on Little Rock and the civil rights struggle, places the events of the Little Rock crisis within the context of the larger story of the African American struggle for freedom and equality in Arkansas. Through a series of essays, Kirk covers topics including the impact of the New Deal; early African American politics and race mobilization; race, gender and the civil rights movement; the role of white liberals in the struggle; and the intersections of race and city planning policy. The book includes a foreword by Minnijean Brown Tickey, one of the Little Rock Nine.

The last book in the series, Race, Politics, and Memory: A Documentary History of the Little Rock School Crisis, brings together newspaper articles, speeches, editorials, photographs, political cartoons and excerpts from oral histories and memoirs to illustrate the conflict as it played out on a national stage. Editors Catherine M. Lewis and J. Richard Lewis selected documents from 1900 to 2006 that reveal something of significance about the event, its origins and its aftermath. It offers a comprehensive documentation of how a local conflict became a national cause.

The press moves beyond Arkansas and the United States to continue publishing works by Middle Eastern authors and about Middle Eastern culture. The first of three works that will appear this fall, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, translated by Sholeh Wolpé, marks the first English translation of the work of the most significant female Iranian poet of the 20^th century. She pushed the boundaries of female expression in the 1950s and 1960s in Iran, bearing the disapproval of society and her family, having her only child taken away and spending time in mental institutions. She died in a car accident in 1967.

Sin includes the entirety of Farrokhzad’s last book, selections from her book Reborn and selections of earlier work to form a collection that preserves the music of the original poems.

The press is issuing a new, updated edition of its book by 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter. In The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East, Carter explores the history of political expectations in the Middle East, the reasons for their different goals and the nature of their prime concerns. He has a vision for the reconciliation of Jews, Muslims and Christians — who share the blood of Abraham.

Another book focuses on young Muslim Americans in the United States. War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims by Melody Moezzi, brings together the stories of 12 young people, all vastly different but all American and all Muslim. From a rapper of Korean and Egyptian descent to a bisexual Sudanese American to a converted white woman from Colorado living in Cairo and wearing the hijab, these individuals have a diverse approach to the same religion. Throughout the book, Moezzi offers a fresh voice as she explores what it means to be a Muslim in post-Sept. 11 America.

The press continues in its diverse themes with books that address civil rights in sports, boxing, law and African American studies, as well as poetry collections. The remaining books in the fall line-up include Breaking Through: John B. McLendon, Basketball Legend and Civil Rights Pioneer, by Milton S. Katz; The Greatest Sport of All: An Inside Look at Another Year in Boxing by Thomas Hauser; A Rift in the Clouds: Race and the Southern Federal Judiciary, 1900-1910 by Brent J. Aucoin; Freebooters and Smugglers: The Foreign Slave Trade in the United States after 1808 by Ernest Obadele-Starks; Nationally Competitive Scholarships edited by Suzanne McCray, associate dean of the University of Arkansas Honors College; and the poetry collections Outlaw Style: Poems by R.T. Smith and Figured Dark: Poems by Greg Rappleye from the Arkansas Poetry Series edited by Enid Shomer.