Word: faubus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Inevitably, into the bitter recall election that resulted stepped the man who, by his inflammatory statements and suggestions, had set off Little Rock's integration explosion in the first place. In a pair of televised speeches. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus put prestige and passion squarely behind CROSS, dismissed STOP as "a smokescreen behind which the integrationists now move forward." Said Faubus: "When there is an attempt to force something bad or something thought to be bad upon the children of this state, I will resist such force with all my might, and it will pass only by trampling over...
Last week Little Rock, scene of an unfinished American morality play, produced a second act. At issue was a Faubus "suggestion" that the six-member Little Rock school board fire certain veteran teachers. Segregationists expanded the purge to 44 teachers, including the principal, two vice principals and 21 teachers at Central High School. No charges were specified; no hearings were held. The teachers, some of whom have been in Little Rock since the '20s, were simply "imprudent" about integration...
...from being legal, the moderates walked out of a board meeting, and there was no quorum. The Faubusites fired the teachers anyway, and Little Rock erupted: 179 angry citizens organized STOP (the Committee to Stop This Outrageous Purge). Using a new anti-integration law rammed through last fall by Faubus himself, STOP flooded the city last week with petitions for a recall election of the Faubusite board members. In three days STOP surged over the required minimum of 7,000 signatures, at week's end had 9,603, plus financial contributions from all over the state...
...STOP's support came an overwhelming majority of Little Rock's 13,000-member-P.T.A. council. When the P.T.A. at one grade school invited Attorney Amis Guthridge of the White Citizens' Council to state his pro-Faubus case, Guthridge merely grumbled a few words to the packed auditorium and sat down. Later he called the meeting "a trap," spoke darkly of "leftwing" P.T.A. leaders rigging "Communist-like demonstrations" at other schools. Such old saws cut no ice. What parents clearly preferred was the stand taken by Russell H. Matson, one of the moderate board members...
...victory for the moderates would not guarantee an all-moderate school board: vacancies can still be filled by the county school board, which seems pro-Faubus. Even an all-moderate board would not mean imminent integration of Little Rock's schools-but simply the first real step in that direction in 20 long months. Whatever the outcome, anti-Faubus sentiment was so rife last week that Faubus himself cautiously announced: "It's the people's business. If they want to recall anybody, that's their right under the law. I signed that law, you know...