The Prick of the Bayonet

"This is the darkest day in Southern history since Reconstruction," vowed a speaker at a Kiwanis meeting in Marshall, Texas, whereupon the Kiwanians refused to give their customary pledge of allegiance to the flag. In Jacksonville an Air Corps veteran mailed his four Air Medals and six battle stars to the President for distribution among the soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division. In Columbia, S.C., Governor George Bell Timmerman Jr. resigned his commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve so that he could not be called into service. In Albany, Ga., persons unknown set fire to two buildings on the campus of the Albany State College (for Negroes), caused an estimated $300,000 in damages.

"If I Were Governor." "Eisenhower has lit the fires of hate,'' intoned Mississippi's Senator James Oliver Eastland. Alabama's Governor James Elisha ("Kissin' Jim'') Folsom pledged that he would disband Alabama's National Guard before he would let Eisenhower order it into federal service. "We still mourn the destruction of Hungary," said Georgia's Senator Herman Talmadge, going his colleague, Dick Russell, one better. "Now the South is threatened by the President of the U.S. using tanks and troops in the streets of Little Rock. I wish I could cast one vote for impeachment right now.'' South Carolina's Senator Olin Johnston went even further. "If I were Governor Faubus," he said, "I'd proclaim a state of insurrection down there, and I'd call out the National Guard, and I'd then find out who's going to run things in my state.''

Southern moderates were critical of Eisenhower, but more so--and more noisily--in public than in private. "A grave and grievous mistake," said Florida's Governor LeRoy Collins. ''Precipitous and unfortunate," added North Carolina's Governor Luther Hodges. "I am the governor of a state where I don't intend for federal troops to ever march," throbbed Tennessee's Governor Frank Goad Clement, tears welling out of his eyes. "Law and order in Tennessee will be preserved for Tennesseans. Is a bayonet going to be the bookmark of Southern education?"

"Force All the Way?" By week's end the South was moving on to consider what next. Would the 101st Airborne at Little Rock advance integration or retard it? "Little Rock," thought one Negro leader in border-state Missouri, "has put a great number of people, both white and Negro, to thinking. Many consciences have been affected by the sadness of the story, and these consciences will help crystallize action." A Charleston, S.C. moderate disagreed: "Those who believed that integration could be accomplished gradually and peacefully are now convinced that Eisenhower will have to use force all the way." Said a prominent Floridian: "We in the South were trying to decide how far we would go and how far the Federal Government would go. Now we know."

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