Guest Column
HOTTELET, RICHARD C.
GUEST COLUMN By Richard C. Hottelet A Foreign Correspondent' In Little Rock, Arkansas There was something funny about the appelation "foreign correspondent," widely applied to the reporters from...
...In fact, the Arkansas Constitution provides for public education between the ages of 6 and 21...
...Daisy Bates, for example, would meet this threat with the same indomitable will with which she confronts the extreme segregationists...
...There is no such cohesion or discipline in the white community...
...The "foreigner"— seeking a coherent pattern—found frustration and exhaustion...
...There is also no such leadership...
...The spectacle of a society milling around in a confusion of good and evil purpose, ignorance, tradition, weakness and heroism was not exactly humorous...
...We can only hope and pray that we can ward off excess and hold our people together until we can face the issue at a quieter time...
...He told them that he could not sanction any form of vigilante action...
...Some ministers have spoken out forthrightly in preaching the equality of man in the eyes of God, but they have been denied the support of their congregations which alone could give this principle practical meaning...
...Faubus's main concern is to ride the wave of segregationist feeling as far as it will carry him...
...There was, indeed, something funny in the situation, but not much...
...Reporters at the Arkansas State Democratic Convention in September will not soon forget the sight of Arkansas's senior Senator, John L. McClellan, fawning on the Governor in the Convention Hall...
...Things have now reached the point," he sighed, "where speaking out would not resolve the moral or the religious issue...
...It raised a few laughs when we sat around the Sam Peck Hotel or the State Capitol wondering whether Berlitz might not do very well to offer a quick course in Southern accents, when one of Governor Orval Faubus's associates intimated that there might well be snipers on roof-tops if the people's passions came to the boil on September 15, the foreign correspondents considered— not without a touch of the serious —whether to mingle in khaki pants and sport shirts or to stand out honorably in jacket and tie...
...The young people who suffer most from the educational chaos might well work out a solution if they were left to themselves...
...Among all the facile answers at several news conferences, there was one moment when there poured out of this urbane and elegant man a hint of what makes him run...
...GUEST COLUMN By Richard C. Hottelet A Foreign Correspondent' In Little Rock, Arkansas There was something funny about the appelation "foreign correspondent," widely applied to the reporters from outside Arkansas who covered the integration crisis at the beginning of the school year...
...He does not know, they say, how far this is...
...The students obeyed, but with manifest reluctance, leaving their superior to wonder how much longer they would accept his authority...
...The explanation...
...Many with means have sent their children to school in other cities...
...They had all had training as paratroopers or rangers, and it seemed obvious that any encounter would have painful consequences for the latrine heroes of white supremacy...
...A "foreigner" in Little Rock hears much speculation about his motives, which are either utterly noble or unspeakably sordid or anything in between, depending on the speaker...
...There is, of course, no telling when and if this quieter time will come...
...but his only other concern is to get off in time if it should ever threaten to swamp him...
...This might explain the halting, makeshift quality of much of his action...
...So far, however, the younger leaders, too, have insisted upon remaining within the law and have not been seriously challenged...
...The Governor's political opponents, and less partial observers, assert that Mr...
...One sad fact is the failure of church influence...
...We heard, for example, from an unimpeachable source, the case of the head of a Negro institution in one of the Southern states which had lately become a target for hoodlums...
...This phenomenal young woman, with a flair for showmanship and a cold, masculine mind, is determined to let nothing keep her cause from riding the momentum of the law...
...As to the guarantee, the Constitution—he said—did not guarantee anyone a high" school education, and no one had helped him beyond public school but he had managed well enough...
...A youngster like Angela Evans, president of the student council at Van Buren High, had the courage to stand up before her town's segregationist Citizens Committee and ask: "Have you thought what you make those Negro children feel like, running them out of school...
...It is likely that Little Rock's Mrs...
...When an enterprising photographer caught the picture of a Negro boy swinging at two white boys who had been taunting him and his sister, Mrs...
...Bates's first reaction was to suspect a provocation which might lead to violence...
...The context was several questions about the damage inflicted on the children's education and about the guarantee of education in the state Constitution...
...One clergyman, sick at heart over the moral corrosion caused by the conflict, felt that he must steer clear of it in his sermons and in his work...
...They have appealed for a chance to continue their schooling, pointing out that, except for some chronic troublemakers, there had been no friotion between Negro and white students at Little Rock's Central High School...
...But the adults, even those who curse Governor Faubus in private and deplore the consequences of flouting the Supreme Court's order, have not even begun to organize an effective opposition...
...The resulting impasse is bemoaned but accepted...
...Her skepticism is as strong as her realism and, although she will press every advantage she has striven successfully to keep Negro emotions in check...
...Here, after all, was a hardheaded, political professional...
...Slobs would slink in at night, smear dirty words on the walls and break windows...
...Some personal experience of the man suggests more than a strong streak of opportunism coupled with a need for self-assertion...
...The police were unable or unwilling to provide the necessary guard, and after several incidents a delegation of students approached this man to suggest that they form a committee of self-defense...
...A great deal depends on the enigmatic personality of Governor Orval Faubus...
...1960 may loom equally large in both men's minds...
...Like other Negroes of the older generation who preach patience and moderation, he found himself regarded with growing disappointment...
...Faubus heatedly professed to be as deeply concerned as anyone about the children's welfare and declared that lost time could be made up, as it had been during the war...
...The wave is a bigger political reality than Faubus...
...And, at times, he came upon elements which opened such dark possibilities that they seemed better left unreported...
...Even when Governor Faubus went so far as to say that Presbyterian ministers had been brainwashed by Communists, there was no visible outrage among the lay members of these or the other churches...
...Nor is this due to general lack of courage in the clergy...
...Community leaders, while not knuckling under to the Governor, have taken refuge in a contradictory respect for law—for both the Federal ruling and the state law that negates it...
Vol. 41 • November 1958 • No. 42
