"Quick, Hard & Decisive"

(See Cover) The President of the U.S. looked once more at the reports arriving in his vacation office near Newport. The weeks of patient working toward peaceful solution were over; a mob, stirred by the governor of Arkansas, still stood in the way of nine Negro youngsters who, by court order, were entitled to join 2,000 whites at Little Rock Central High School. Two aides and a secretary watched silently as President Eisenhower, his decision made, picked up a pen and signed a historic document: it ordered Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson to use the armed forces of the U.S. to uphold the law of the land in Little Rock.

The Pentagon was ready: informed that the President's order was on the way. Wilson rapped out his own instructions. The ground and air forces of the Arkansas National Guard were placed in federal service, safely out of the hands of Governor Orval Faubus. who had used them to defy the U.S. Government. Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor called Fort Campbell, Ky. and assigned the 327th Battle Group of his old outfit, the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division, to bring law to Little Rock. Tough, battle-tried Major General Edwin Walker was placed in command of all troops in the Arkansas district. Air Force Secretary James Douglas soon had eight C-130 and 38 C-123 transport planes on the way from Tennessee to Fort Campbell.

That night, just eight hours after President Eisenhower signed his orders, the first trucks of the 101st Airborne drove up to Central High. It was one of the nation's most painful moments, and the first use of U.S. troops in a Southern racial crisis since Reconstruction days. Explained the President in a radio-TV speech to the nation: "The very basis of our individual rights and freedoms rests upon the certainty that the President and the executive branch of Government will support and insure the carrying out of the decisions of the federal courts, even, when necessary, with all the means at the President's command. Unless the President did so, anarchy would result."

Life of the Party. The President did not mention Orval Faubus by name, but it was Faubus, more than any other, who had confronted the U.S. with a choice between law and anarchy. During the previous three weeks, egged on by racists around him, he had stirred Little Rock into emotional turmoil. Ambitious for a third term, eager to win political support from Arkansas segregationists, he had thwarted a federal court integration order by calling out his National Guard to "prevent violence" in a city where none existed. What the National Guard was really being used for was to bar the nine Negro children from Central High. Making each new step more drastic than his last, Faubus made inflammatory statement after inflammatory statement. He called off the National Guard in response to an injunction issued against him by U.S. District Judge Ronald Davies, spurning Judge Davies' alternative offer: to change the National Guard's orders so that the militia would uphold--rather than defy--law and order.

Orval Faubus had thus staked his political future on his claim that there would be violence in Little Rock. Almost single-handed he had created the reality of violence from its myth. After withdrawing his National Guard, he had taken off for the Southern Governors' Conference at Sea Island, Ga., stopping on the way to see the Georgia-Texas football game at Atlanta. ("He's really lapping up the glory," said one of his fellow governors. "There were 33,000 people at the game, and every time they cheered a play, Faubus stood up and bowed.") The next night Faubus cavorted in the Silver Room of Sea Island's Cloister Hotel, signing autographs, sipping bourbon and Seven-Up, and dancing. Orval Faubus was the life of the party. The night wore on--and the dawn approached when he would get violence in Little Rock.

"There's a Nigger." 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 idly swinging billy clubs behind sawhorse barricades. These were the men that Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann, former insurance agent turned well-meaning--but sometimes ineffectual--public servant, had said could preserve the peace in Little Rock. (Police Chief Marvin Potts apparently was not so sure: he judiciously stayed in his office.) But right at the beginning the Little Rock cops made their first and greatest mistake: they let a crowd begin to gather. It was small at first, and quiet. Asked one man in grey working clothes of another: "What're you doing here?" Came the reply: "Just came by to see what's doing."

While the cops watched with kindly detachment, the crowd grew. Some roughnecks began drifting in. The police uneasily tried to make friends. "Do you think I like this?" asked one. "I'm just trying to do my job." An old man turned his dry, grassfire eyes on Central High School, worked his bare gums in pleasure over the time "we burned a nigger in '27." A fat ex-schoolteacher named Arthur Bickle looked around at the crowd's hooligans, chortled his satisfaction: "They've separated the men from the boys."

Perhaps most important of all, James ("Jimmy the Flash") Karam, head of the Arkansas State Athletic Commission, was on the scene from the beginning. Karam, once a third-string halfback at Auburn (he is fond of recalling his days as an "All-American"), turned professional strikebreaker (he bossed a goon-staffed outfit called Veterans Industrial Association Inc.), then became a Little Rock haberdasher and a near, dear friend to Governor Orval Faubus. Last week, while his wife was with Orval and Alta Faubus at Sea Island, Jimmy Karam moved purposefully around the crowd outside Central High School, whispering here, nodding curtly there, ducking into a gasoline station to make telephone calls.

"If You Want to Be Chicken." Assistant Police Chief Eugene Smith, in charge at the high school, watched the crowd sharply, began to feel a sense of purpose and organization, noted that "half the troublemakers were from out of town." A girl in a yellow skirt talked to a schoolboy, his books in one hand, a gallon jug with two lively brown mice in the other. "If you want to be chicken," said the girl, "go on in." The boy smiled shamefacedly --and went to school. 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. Faubus Henchman James Karam cried angrily, "The nigger started it!" A huge man came up behind Karam and said: "Get five or six boys, and get them over there where the nigger kids came in last time." State Athletic Commissioner Karam led five bullyboys to the other end of the school.

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 two 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. It churned madly around and, in the absence of Negroes to maul, turned on Northern newsmen, beating three LIFE staffers. At noon Little Rock's Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann ordered the Negro children withdrawn from the school.

Far away at sunny Sea Island, having kept in telephone touch, Orval Faubus proclaimed his triumph: "The trouble in Little Rock vindicates my good judgment." But the grin was soon wiped off his face by the dramatic rush of events in Washington and Newport.

"I Will Have to Sign It." President Eisenhower had resisted all public and private cries for drastic action, had worked determinedly to keep Little Rock's trouble where it belonged: in the courtroom instead of the street. But his personal conference with Orval Faubus in Newport (TIME, Sept. 23) heightened his growing suspicion that he might have to move, however reluctantly, into the Little Rock situation. "If I do," he told an associate, "you can bet one thing. It will be quick, hard and decisive." Preparing against the day, Attorney General Herbert Brownell drafted a proclamation ordering compliance with the court's decision and opening the way for the eventual use of U.S. troops in Little Rock.

On the Monday morning that integration began at Central High School, President Eisenhower flew to Washington for a speaking engagement before the International Monetary Fund, then held a brief, tense conference with Brownell. Barely back in Rhode Island that afternoon, Ike heard from Brownell over the maximum-security telephone in his personal quarters. The news was all bad. A mob ruled at Central High. School Superintendent Virgil Blossom (voted the city's Man of the Year in 1955, now vilified for backing a gradual integration plan) had excitedly called the Justice Department: "Mayor Mann wants to know who to call to get federal help."

To Dwight Eisenhower, the issue was not integration v. segregation; it was the integrity of the U.S. Government and its judicial decisions. Orval Faubus had left him no choice. Said he to Brownell: "I want you to send up that proclamation. It looks like I will have to sign it, but I want "to read it again." That evening, on the sun porch of his living quarters, President Eisenhower signed the proclamation commanding all persons obstructing justice in Little Rock "to cease and desist therefrom 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.

"Hello Defiance." Only a handful of people stood outside Central High School that night as the troops hove in sight. The paratroopers spilled out of their trucks, formed smartly on the school grounds. Field telephone lines were strung from the trunks of the high school's lordly oaks. Jeeps moved around to the rear of the school, parked in a line along practice-football charging machines. Pup tents blossomed in back of the school's tennis courts. Colonel William A. Kuhn, smart and salty, swung a swagger stick as he examined a map of the school grounds.

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. Radio patrol jeeps sped back and forth. A walkie-talkie crackled: "Hello Defiance, this is Crossroads Six." 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," muttered 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.

One Last Word. When the class bell finally rang, the Negro students had not yet arrived. District Commander Walker, out of rugged Hill County, Texas (where it is said of the best people: "They kill their own snakes"), called the white pupils into the auditorium, explained his mission: "You have nothing to fear from my soldiers, and no one will interfere with your coming, going, or your peaceful pursuit of your studies . . . One last word about my soldiers. They are here because they have been ordered to be here. They are seasoned, well-trained soldiers, many of them combat veterans. Being soldiers, they are as determined as I to carry out their orders."

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 Living End. But not for long--trouble was developing at Roadblock Alpha, the day's hot spot. The crowd was growing again. Major Meyers ordered it to move on. Nothing happened--and Meyers was fed up. He rasped harshly over his loudspeaker: "Let's clear this area right now. This is the living end! I'll tell you, we're not going to do it on a slow walk this time."

The crowd scrambled back onto the front lawn and porch of a private home, screaming protests that the soldiers had no right to bother them there. The paratroopers came on, moved up the porch steps, began pushing people off. A Missouri Pacific switchman named C. E. Blake, for days one of the most vocal of the agitators around Central High ("I advocate violence"), grabbed for a rifle, pulled a paratrooper to the ground with him. Another trooper reversed his rifle, smashed its butt against Blake's head. Blake, blood streaming from a shallow scalp wound, scuttled away, shouting to newsmen and photographers as he went: "Who knows the name of that lowlife s.o.b. who hit me?" A top sergeant ordered his men: "Keep those bayonets high--right at the base of the neck."

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 recalled: "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.

Monument to Demagoguery. Orval Faubus, meanwhile, had flown back from Sea Island. Arriving in Little Rock, Faubus joked feebly: "I feel like MacArthur. I've been relieved of my job." But Orval Faubus had no intention of fading away. He holed up in his executive mansion and began working on a national television speech.

It was a monument to demagoguery. "Evidence of the naked force of the Federal Government is here apparent in these unsheathed bayonets in the backs of schoolgirls," cried Faubus, holding up a photograph--but not long enough to show that the girls were merely walking, giggling, past a line of troopers. In the Faubus account, bloodied Agitator Blake was suddenly transformed into a "guest in a home." The Army had gone on an orgy of "wholesale arrests." Actual number: eight, with four fined for loitering, and four released at the police station. An "imported judge," i.e., U.S. District Judge Ronald Davies of Fargo, N. Dak. (TIME, Sept. 30), had refused permission for the Faubus side to cross-examine Government witnesses. (Faubus neglected to mention that he had refused to answer a summons to appear in Judge Davies' court, or that his lawyers had walked out on the showdown hearing.) Teen-age girls had "been taken by the FBI and held incommunicado for hours of questioning while their frantic parents knew nothing of their whereabouts." (Said FBI Director John Edgar Hoover: Faubus was "disseminating falsehoods.")

Then, overwhelmed by the injustice of it all, Orval Faubus recalled that as a World War II officer in the 35th Infantry Division he had "helped rescue" the 101st Airborne from Bastogne (by the time the 35th arrived on the scene, it was the Germans who needed rescuing from the Screaming Eagles). Cried Orval Faubus: "Today we find the members of the famed division, which I helped rescue, in Little Rock, Ark., bludgeoning innocent bystanders, with bayonets in the backs of schoolgirls, and the warm, red blood of patriotic American citizens staining the cold, naked, unsheathed knives. In the name of God, whom we all revere, in the name of liberty we hold so dear, which we all cherish, what is happening in America?"

Placing the Blame. What was happening in America was that Orval Faubus had failed in his attempt to overturn the law of the land with force. In the strongest official language he had used since entering the White House, President Eisenhower placed the blame for Little Rock's ordeal where it belonged: on Orval Faubus. Replying to a message of protest from Georgia's Senator Richard Russell (whom Ike had gone out of his way to placate during the fight on civil rights legislation in the 85th Congress), the President said:

"Few times in my life have I felt as saddened as when the obligations of my office required me to order the use of a force within a state to carry out the decisions of a federal court. My conviction is that had the police powers of the State of Arkansas been used not to frustrate the orders of the court but to support them, the ensuing violence and open disrespect for the law and for the federal judiciary would never have occurred . . .

"As a matter of fact, had the integration of Central High School been permitted to take place without the intervention of the National Guard, there is little doubt that the process would have gone along quite as smoothly and quietly as it has in other Arkansas communities."

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