Fewer than 100 people (not counting reporters,
pupils and militiamen) were outside Central High when the test came. Most
of the Negro children came in a group, accompanied by adults, and left
quietly when told by a National Guardsman that "Governor Faubus has placed
this school off limits to Negroes." But little Elizabeth Eckford, 15,
stepped alone from a bus at the corner of 14th and Park Streets. In a neat
cotton dress, bobbysox and ballet slippers, she walked straight to the
National Guard line on the sidewalk. The Guardsmen raised their rifles,
keeping her out.
Elizabeth, clutching tight at her notebook,
began a long, slow walk down the two blocks fronting the school. She
turned once to try the line again--and again the rifles came up. A militia
major shielded her from the crowds, escorted her to a bus-stop bench, left
her. "Go home, you burr head," reaped an adult voice. Elizabeth sat dazed
as the crowd moved in. Then Mrs. Grace Lorch, wife of Little Rock
schoolteacher, sat down on the bench and slipped her arm around the
child's shoulders. "This is just a little girl," she cried at the crowd.
"Next week you'll all be ashamed of yourselves."
After 35 minutes a bus finally pulled up. Mrs.
Lorch took Elizabeth's arm and shoved through the crowd. "I'm just waiting
for one of you to touch me," said she. "I'm just aching to punch somebody
in the nose." The crowd gave way before the white- haired woman and the
little girl--and that was about as close as Little Rock came all week to
Orval Faubus' manufactured "violence."
[After a national furor, and a meeting between
Faubus and President Eisenhower, a federal judge ordered the governor to
remove the troops from around the schools. When the violence Faubus had
predicted, and incited, finally occurred, the President moved quickly to
restore order and enforce federal law.]
(October 7, 1957)
Monday morning in Little Rock came bright and
crisp. At 6 a.m., on the day that Judge Davies had ordered integration to
begin at Central High School, about 70 cops stood about swinging billy
clubs behind sawhorse barricades.
Assistant Police Chief Eugene Smith, in charge
of the high school, watched the crowd sharply, began to feel a sense of
purpose and organization, noted that "half the trouble-makers were from
out of town." The Central High School class bell rang at 8:45--and at
almost that instant a shriek went up: "Here come the niggers!"
Four Negro newsmen had foolishly approached the
crowd from the rear. It was the tinder's spark. Some 20 rednecks turned on
the Negroes, began chasing them back down the block. Other whites streamed
behind. A one-armed man, his dimpled stump below his shirtsleeve, swung
wildly at one Negro. Another Negro (a onetime U.S. marine) decided not to
run, ambled with terrifying dignity through a gauntlet of blows, kicks and
curses. A cop stood on a car bumper to get a better view. Other cops moved
toward the fighting.
The Negro children had already entered Central
High School. While the mob's attention was distracted by the Negro
newsmen, the nine students stepped from cars and walked slowly, calmly
into the school. But the mob had nonetheless won the first day's battle of
Central High School: it had discovered that it could act violently without
suffering at the hands of the cops. From that moment on, the result was
inevitable. The mob grew from 300 to 500 to 900; it had tasted blood and
liked it.
To Dwight Eisenhower, the issue was not
integration v. segregation; it was the integrity of the U.S. Government
and its judicial decision, Orval Faubus had left him no choice. President
Eisenhower signed the proclamation commanding all persons obstructing
justice in Little Rock "to cease and desist and to disperse forthwith."
Only one hope remained for avoiding the use of
U.S. troops in Little Rock: obedience next morning to the proclamation.
The President, walking to his office just before 8 a.m., noticed that
"there's a cold wind blowing up." There was indeed: the reports from
Brownell began flooding in. The mob had not dispersed. Shoving and
shouting outside Central High School, it refrained from violence only
because the Negro children did not appear. A telegram came from Little
Rock's Mayor Mann: the situation was beyond the control of local
authorities. Then President Eisenhower signed the order that sent the
Screaming Eagles to Little Rock.
By 5 a.m. Wednesday, combat-ready paratroopers
lined the two blocks of Park Avenue in front of the school, stood with
fixed bayonets on corners a block away in each direction. A crowd began
gathering a block east of the school, where "Roadblock Alpha" had been
thrown up at an intersection. Major James Meyers, a thin, hard man with
the glint of a hawk in his eyes, ordered up a sound truck. "Please return
to your homes," said he, "or it will be necessary for us to disperse you."
Nobody moved, "Nigger lover," shouted a man. A
voice came from the shadows: "Russian!" A man in a brown suit was full of
bravado: "They're just bluffing. If you don't want to move, you don't have
to." Meyers snapped out an order: a dozen paratroopers moved into line,
rifles at the on-guard position (butts on hip, bayonets forward). Brown
Suit held his ground for a moment against the advancing soldiers, then
scurried away with the rest of the crowd.
A few minutes later a crisp, careful military
movement put the nine Negro children safely into Central High School. A
jeep rolled through the barricade at 16th Street and Park Avenue, followed
by an Army station wagon and another jeep. The Negroes piled out of the
station wagon. Three platoons came on the double across the school
grounds, deployed in strategic positions. Another platoon lined up on
either side of the Negroes, escorted them inside the building. There was
dead silence around Central High School.
The cold toughness of the Screaming Eagles
abruptly put an end to violence at Roadblock Alpha--or anywhere else
around Central High. The Negro children reported that they were well
treated inside the school. (Arkansas N.A.A.C.P. Leader Daisy Bates had
carefully coached her charges to be prepared for insults, to be dignified
when vilified, and above all to reveal no bitterness when questioned by
newsmen.) During the noon hour a white boy and girl, both school leaders,
saw a Negro boy eating alone. They asked: "Would you like to come over to
our table?" The boy smiled gratefully, "Gosh, I'd love to."
And another Negro pupil called: "The white
kids broke the ice. They talked to us." Clearly, many of the white
children of Central High School were proving themselves better citizens
than their elders.
[Faubus had succeeded in delaying integration
in Little Rock, and a year later, the Supreme Court addressed the Arkansas
impasse.]
(October 13, 1958)
In the most closely reasoned, carefully
pinpointed opinion of the whole desegregation struggle, the Supreme Court
last week struck at the massive Southern attempts to avoid compliance with
its 1954 integration order. Specifically, the court aimed its opinion at
Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus--but its effect would be felt in Virginia
and in any other Southern state that had placed hopes for resistance in
hedgerows of state laws.
The opinion was an extension of the terse
Supreme Court ruling of last month which turned down the plea of the
Little Rock school board for a delay of 2 1/2 years in resuming its
gradual integration program.
Reviewing the Arkansas record, the court found
that integration violence in Little Rock was "directly traceable to the
actions of legislators and executive officials of the State of
Arkansas...which reflect their own determination to resist this court's
[desegregation] decision."