Spotlight on the Terrence Roberts Papers

The Terrence Roberts papers were donated to the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies by Terrence J. Roberts in 2017 and opened to researchers the following year, on the heels of the sixtieth anniversary of the Little Rock Central High School Desegregation Crisis. Roberts is best known for his role as one of the nine African American students who entered the previously all-white Central High in 1957. Roberts’s papers document his experiences over the years as a member of the Little Rock Nine, as well as his professional and personal life as a psychologist, author, and speaker. In 2013, Butler Center Books published Roberts’s memoir Lessons from Little Rock.

The bulk of the collection consists of research, notes, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, and audiovisual material related to the desegregation crisis and subsequent commemoration events. The collection also includes research, writings, correspondence, and records pertaining to Roberts’s psychology career, as well as personal correspondence, newspaper clippings, speeches and writings, personal records, photographs, awards, and artwork.

Terrence James Roberts was born on December 3, 1941, in Little Rock, Arkansas, to William and Margaret Roberts. His father was a World War II naval veteran who worked at the Veterans Administration hospital in North Little Rock, and his mother ran a catering service from home.

Roberts was a sophomore at Horace Mann High School in Little Rock when he volunteered to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School for the 1957–58 school year. The following year, the city’s high schools were closed to prevent further desegregation (known as the Lost Year), and Roberts moved to Los Angeles, California, to finish high school. He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1959. Roberts attended California State University at Los Angeles and earned a BA in sociology in 1967. He attended graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles and received an MS in social welfare in 1970. In 1976, Roberts earned a PhD in psychology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

From 1975 to 1977, Roberts was a member of the faculty at Pacific Union College, a private liberal arts college in Napa Valley, California. From 1977 to 1985, he was director of mental health at St. Helena Hospital and Health Center. From 1985 to 1993, he was assistant dean in the UCLA School of Social Welfare. Roberts joined Antioch University Los Angeles in 1993 and served as core faculty and co-chair of the Master of Arts in Psychology program until 2008. He then served as principal of the management-consulting firm Terrence Roberts Consulting. In 2014, during the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Arkansas Psychological Association presented Roberts with the Civil Rights Award to recognize his efforts toward the advancement of humanitarian causes and social justice.

Roberts lives in Pasadena, California, with his wife, Rita J. Anderson Roberts; they have two daughters: Angela Rayschel Roberts and Rebecca Darlene Goodloe. For much of his adult life, Roberts has traveled the country speaking on race relations and discrimination in the United States, through the lens of his experience as a member of the Little Rock Nine.

For more information about Terrence Roberts and his impact on Arkansas and American history, see the entry on him in the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

This collection, BC.MSS.17.44, is available in the Research Room of the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art, and the finding aid is online. Visit the CALS website (opens in new window) for Roberts Library visiting information (opens in new window).