Word: faubusing
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...calling out the National Guard against school integration in Little Rock (TIME, Sept. 16), Faubus meant only to further his personal political ambitions. But the slightly sophisticated hillbilly from near Greasy Creek had, in fact, set off a chain reaction that quickly went beyond his control; his manufactured crisis in Little Rock brought the reality of crisis to other Southern cities, aroused the North as rarely before, turned askew the nation's political picture, and placed the U.S. on the moral defensive...
Worse Than Cancer. In Faubus' own state, the impact of his defiance was immediate and sharp. At North Little Rock (pop. 50,000), officials had been so confident of peaceful school integration that they were going ahead without even a court order. With Faubus whipping up emotions across the muddy Arkansas River, the North Little Rock people realized that they were in trouble. Integration was suspended (said a school board member: "We don't want the Guard over here"), and responsible Negro leaders joined with white in asking Negro parents to keep their children away...
Other Negroes, angered to recklessness by the Faubus action, egged the parents on. Result: six Negro pupils tried to go to school. They ran up against a pack of pool-hall bums led by a beefy, red-faced man who stood with arms folded across his chest and grandly proclaimed: "They shall not pass." Pushed and shoved away, the Negroes did not pass...
Spreading Tension. What Orval Faubus wrought for Arkansas, he wrought for the South. Said the Knoxville, Tenn. News-Sentinel of Orval's stand: "This official act has lent an air of respectability and social approval to mob action." Violence exploded in Nashville (see below), and responsible officials attributed it directly to the impact of the news from Little Rock. In Charlotte, N.C., Dorothy Counts, Negro high school girl who had faced the jeers of a crowd with dignity and courage the week before, finally surrendered to heightened passion, withdrew from school...
...Louisville, a segregationist composed a battle hymn: "Stand firmly by your cannon/Let ball and grapeshot fly/And trust in God and Faubus/But keep your powder dry." In Alabama four potential candidates for governor set a political pattern for the South, each desperately trying to outdo the others in praise of Faubus. One wired Faubus his congratulations. Another promised to back Faubus "at all costs." A third offered to go to jail to prevent integration. The fourth topped them all: he was willing to die for segregation...