No Time for Bridge Burners

Standing before the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court last week, Lawyer Richard C. Butler, counsel for Little Rock's board of education, tried hard to make clear the board's plea for a postponement of integration at Little Rock's Central High School. The board, Butler said, was "placed between the millstones [of] two sovereignties"--the Federal Government and Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus. If law and order had broken down in Little Rock, Butler submitted, that was not the fault of the school board, which had labored to make integration work. The board's dilemma was similar to that of a drayman, he explained, who was ordered to go from "Point A" to "Point B," and in doing so, to cross a bridge over a deep chasm. The bridge, however, had collapsed. Would it be right, asked he, to require the drayman to make the trip?

From his chair next to Chief Justice Earl Warren, tiny, pince-nezed Felix Frankfurter observed: "A court of equity would not be beyond its powers to require that the bridge be restored."

Make It Clear. It was precisely Orval Faubus' deliberate burning of the bridges between federal justice and enforcement that brought the N.A.A.C.P. and Little Rock's school board back before the high court last week. And the question before the court was whether bridge burning and violence were lawful excuses for slowing down the crawl toward integration.

From N.A.A.C.P. Counsel Thurgood Marshall came a pointed argument against the proposition: "I worry about the white children in Little Rock who are told . . . that the way to get your rights is to violate the law. It should be affirmed . . . that Article VI of the Constitution means what it says." Echoing Marshall's plea, U.S. Solicitor General J. Lee Rankin rose to remind the court of the obligations of school boards and state authorities to uphold the Constitution. "The court," said he, "must say throughout the length and breadth of this land: There can be no equality of justice for our people if the law steps aside even for a moment."

Make It Prompt. Next day at noon, the Supreme Court chamber was again charged with suspense. The overhead clocks ticked off the minutes as spectators moved quietly to the handful of seats and a hundred more lined up outside. U.S. Attorney General William P. Rogers slipped in quietly. So did some wives and children of the Justices. Soon two page boys in knickers and high black socks mounted the bench, pushed the nine chairs back and forth to see if they rolled easily, made sure that each Justice was provided with his customary pencil, scissors and paper. In a few seconds they were gone. Abruptly, from behind the red draperies hanging between the Italian marble columns, the members of the court appeared, and the court crier chanted his old cry of "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!"

As the Associate Justices rested back in their chairs--all looking straight ahead, with the exception of Frankfurter, who turned his chair to face the Chief Justice

--Earl Warren briskly read the court's unanimous decision, which, he announced, will be followed in due course with a full written opinion: "In view of the imminent commencement of the new school year at the Central High School of Little Rock," the court deemed it important to make a prompt announcement of its decision. "It is accordingly ordered that the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, dated August 18, 1958 ... be affirmed"; i.e., the school board's plea for more time was denied.

Make It Orderly. With utter finality, the Supreme Court had spoken to the bridge burners. Now it remained for law-enforcement agencies to build a new bridge. Anticipating the court's decision, Attorney General Rogers had written two remarkable letters to Little Rock. One advised the school board president that the Justice Department was ready to help him get federal injunctions against anyone who violated federal court orders. The other reminded City Manager Dean Dau-ley that state authorities were primarily responsible for law and order. But the U.S. marshal and more than 100 deputy marshals would be on hand to cooperate.

Two and one-half hours after the Supreme Court's ruling, President Eisenhower added prestigious emphasis to the Federal Government's earnest plans for orderly compliance with the law. Said the President: "I appeal to the sense of civic responsibility that animates the vast majority of our citizenry to avoid defiance of the court's orders ... All of us know that if an individual, a community or a state is going continuously and successfully to defy the rulings of the courts, then anarchy results ... I hope that all of us may live up to our traditional and proud boast that ours is a government of laws. Let us keep it that way."

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