Edward Clark worked for more than twenty years as a photojournalist for "LIFE" magazine, which took him on assignments throughout the United States and Europe. He was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, and preferred to raise his family there rather than relocate to New York City, where his career might have further prospered. His many assignments in the late 1950s included covering the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. This haunting photograph dramatically captures the climate of racial tension that existed in the community at the time.