A Bad Day at Little Rock

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 948, 11 October 1957, Page 10

A Bad Day at Little Rock

| HE trouble at Little Rock (a name that now needs no identification) may be ended when these words are printed, but it will not be forgotten. It was a small thing if compared with the "integration" which has gone on quietly and successfully since the United States Supreme Court condemned the doctrine of equal but separate schools. In most States segregation did not exist; it was only in the south and the border country that reform was needed. Yet public opinion has been deeply stirred, for events at Little Rock are linked in memory to issues which survive from the days of slavery and civil wars. This time there is no _ clearcut division between North and South. Propagandists who hastened to exploit the situation were careful not to notice that comment near the scene of disorder was far more trenchant than criticism from outside. The high school at Ozark was being ‘integrated without protest or difficulty until the infection spread from Little Rock. Time reported that Miss Elizabeth Burrow, dying of throat cancer, printed her verdict in her weekly newspaper. "Here’s a malignancy worse than my cancer," she wrote, "and I wouldn’t swap with you." A large majority of the people shared her anger and shame. The worst feature of the disturbance was its artificial beginning. Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, has been described as a politician on the make, and his intervention seems to have been part of his campaign to win renomination, Without his interference, the peaceful integration already taking place in southern cities would have continued almost unnoticed — except perhaps by a few reactionaries and _ troublemakers. The Governor could do no more than interrupt the process; but in a few days of irresponsible action he divided the South, embarrassed the Democrats (his own party), and humiliated the nation, It seems probable that the incidents have been ex- | aggerated: American reports re-

veal much unpleasantness and some downright ugliness, but little real violence. The events have been magnified because notebooks, cameras and microphones picked up every detail and spread the news across the world. Press and television gave wings to the crisis; but if they made the story seem larger than life they succeeded also in mobilising national opinion. And the President would not have sent in Federal troops unless there was a real danger that the situation could pass out of control. At such times the crust of democracy wears thin. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard on the pretext that there was risk of violence if Negro children were allowed to go to Central High School. His policy was not to protect them, but to have them excluded. And the hint was soon taken by rabble-rousers. The Americans have not spared themselves in their treatment of this part of the story. Reports of what happened in Little Rock and elsewhere leave an impression of the faceless mob. The details are not all bad: there are stories of white women who protected Negroes, as well as of women who spat at them, The most moving evidence has come from the camera. A photograph in Time shows a 15-year-old Negro girl-daughter of a professor of theology-walking to a school in Charlotte. Behind her is a mob of jeering children and teenagers; but she keeps right on, her head high and her eyes calm with a courage which shames her tormentors. The faces around her are not ugly: most of them are too young and silly. The ugliness of a mob is collective, a sudden reversion to the behaviour of the pack. It will pass from the southern towns as quickly as it came, and children who mocked the new pupils will presently accept them as friends. The real enemies are unscrypulous men who called up old hatreds, not understanding that in touching a nation’s conscience they were also summoning a greater power for

good.

M.H.

H.