See how it looked in 1957

Negro Students Get Protection; Eisenhower Lashes at ‘Mob Rule’

No Trouble at Scene

By a Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Little Rock, Ark.

Faculty members here at Central High School are reported determined to use their influence with the student body to receive quietly the Negro children that have entered and to help avert any possible violence inside the school itself.

Presence of the regular Army Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division on the school grounds assured peaceful entry of the Negroes. What concerns school officials now is the reception the Negroes will get in the early days inside the school.

Faculty members, especially coaches and athletic assistants, have been assigned special duty in the corridors to break up any movement toward harming the Negroes. Several student leaders, who have absented themselves from school, are known to have agreed to be on hand in the classrooms to use their influence with other students to preserve peace and assure the right atmosphere if possible.

Students Hear General

As part of this movement, the commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, spoke to the students assembled this morning. He tried to explain why the troops are here in simple terms, referring to law in the same way that the President did last night—that “the United States is a nation under the law and not under men.”

The general also tried to reassure the children, saying, “I believe that you are well-intentioned, law-abiding citizens, who understand the necessity of obeying the law, and are determined to do so.”

In strong contrast to the screaming and fury of Sept. 24, there was quiet outside Central High Sept. 25. There were no catcalls and no real incidents as the six Negro girls and three boys walked calmly into the previously all-white school. They were escorted by the federal troops.

In a great arc at least two blocks from the school soldiers kept breaking up clusters of people and moving them back. In this process two civilians were hurt. One tried to grab a paratrooper’s rifle and was struck by the soldier. Another, apparently slow in obeying an order, was slightly cut.

There seemed to be no mass exodus of students after the entry. A school official said there were more than 1,200 students in the school, meaning that about 750 are absent. This is only a small increase over the number absent Sept. 24.

South Jolted

The presence of federal troops in a southern capital to enforce court-decreed integration of races in public schools has jolted southern leaders into a search for a more basic solution to the Little Rock Crisis, lest it spread across the South.

While paratroopers of the United States Army’s 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell Ky., bivouacked in the Arkansas capital, governors of southern states, meeting in the Atlantic coast resort at Sea Island, Ga., have taken under consideration a proposal by Gov. Frank Clement of Tennessee for an emergency committee to study the situation.
“This crisis is no longer one of whether certain students should go to a certain school,” Governor Clement has emphasized. “This crisis has reached the proportions of whether federal troops should be used against citizens of a sovereign state.”

Clinton Case Recalled

The rapid pace of the Little Rock crisis, and its impact on the constitutional framework on which state and federal relations rest, is putting southern leaders to the test. The Tennessee chief executive himself met a similar test forthrightly last year when he sent National Guard troops to Clinton, Tenn., to restore order after violence erupted when Negro students were integrated in the town’s public schools. The Tennessee militia protected the young Negroes and brought the town back to order. This year, the Clinton schools resumed without any disturbance.
Here in Little Rock the Army has made one effort to avoid trouble by saying that Negro members of the airborne division will not be used as guards or as patrols. They will be engaged only in support work in reserve.

Precedent Scented

“Governors of good will have been described by the President as his partners in government. If a crisis arises in business, the partners are going to sit down and discuss it. A crisis has arisen in our partnership. Why shouldn’t the partners sit down and discuss it instead of fighting it out in the newspapers, with lawyers in between?”
Governor Clement is apprehensive that the President may be setting a precedent which could be applied to other internal troubles in a state.
There are signs that even the most ardent progressionists are a bit alarmed over the whirlpool of events which is drawing the nation into its most serious constitutional crisis since Reconstruction.

Faculty Prepares

In Little Rock itself, a meeting Sept. 24 of the local White Citizens Council heard a warning that every effort must be made to “avoid violence.” Recognized newsmen were barred from the meeting in Little Rock’s Hotel Lafayette, attended by an overflow crowd of about 800 men and women. While leaders insisted that the council “deplores violence,” some statements were made which were interpreted as suggestions to Negroes to think of the future.
Amis Guthridge, Little Rock attorney, a strong segregationist, commented that “we will be here long after the troops have gone home.”
On the other side, faculty members of Central High School, focal point of the Little Rock trouble, and leaders of the white students, are reported determined to use their influence with the student body to receive the Negroes quietly and to help avert any possible violence inside the school itself.