CHAPTER 30

When Governor Faubus, who had gone out of town, got word of the new violence in Little Rock on Monday morning, he called on people in Arkansas not to take the law into their own hands and hinted he might call out the National Guard again.

Meanwhile, President Eisenhower called the disturbances disgraceful and said he would use the full power of the United States to carry out the order of the federal courts. The next day, headlines in the Arkansas Gazette and other papers announced, “Ike Clears Way to Send Troops.”

In Unionville, Lester Grimes had heard about the president’s decision on TV the night before, and he was out bright and early looking for somebody to complain to. This time he bypassed the Otasco store and struck out for Emmett’s. Finding the café crowd already stirred up, he took a counter stool and signaled for coffee. For once, however, he did more listening than talking.

“By god, I’m glad I ain’t in the army now,” Boomer Jenkins was saying midway down the counter. He sat sideways, his wooden leg sticking out into the aisle.“It’s a damn sorry thing for the president to use soldiers to make white kids go to school with a bunch of burr heads. I swear if I had kids, wouldn’t nobody make me send them to school with the black bastards. I’d keep them home.”

“I think ole Ike’s turning into a commie just like them damned federal judges,” Jim Ed Davis said from a booth where he was sitting with Crow Hicks. “I’d love to cut every damn one of them’s nuts off.”

“I’ll help you do it,” Crow Hicks said. “I ain’t fixing to mix with no niggers.”

“Well, I tell you right now,” Boomer said. “If Eisenhower sends troops up there, there’s only two ways we’re gon’ stop integration down here. The first one is to keep the coloreds scared and the second one is to shoot some of them if they try something.”

When Pearl got to the newspaper office, she found Preston Upshaw in deep conversation with Elmer Spurlock. The editor was sitting at his desk, the preacher had pulled a chair up to one side of it, and papers were scattered between two drained coffee mugs on top. As Pearl approached, Spurlock crushed a cigarette in Upshaw’s ashtray, raked in the papers, and stood up.

“Well, I best be getting on to my painting job,” the preacher said. “I’ll see you out at the church Thursday night.” Turning to Pearl, he said,“Good morning, Mrs. Goodbar. You’re welcome to come too. The meeting’s open to everybody, men and women.”

“I expect Mr. Upshaw will fill me in on it,” Pearl said.

“If you don’t come,” Spurlock said from the doorway,“you’re gon’ be missing something mighty important.”

“What’s the something important he’s talking about?” Pearl asked, after he left.

“He’s just talking about getting the Citizens’ Council started. We have to get people organized. Brother Spurlock’s gon’ see to it.”

“Seems to me you’re taking more than a journalistic interest in what he’s up to,” Pearl said.

“I reckon that’s a matter of perspective, Mrs. Goodbar. I feel a responsibility to help people see the trouble they’re facing, and I’m gon’ speak at the meeting. It’ll help us get more subscribers.”

“It’s true,” Almalee Jolly said from Gran’s sofa. “I heard it on the news last night. They said Eisenhower’s gon’ send troops today.”

“He’s a dadgum Yankee Republican,” Gran said, frowning. She was sitting in her rocker and had her feet planted on her padded shotgun shell crate like she meant to push it through the floor. “He’s just like them good-for-nothings my daddy had to deal with when he come home from Virginia. I swan! He must be rolling over in his grave. This is gon’ be like Reconstruction all over again.”

“Gran, can people really roll over in their graves?” Mary Jane asked. She was sitting under her grandmother’s quilting frame again, rocking one of her favorite dolls to sleep.

“No, hon, that’s just a saying. It means if that person was alive now, they wouldn’t like something they was seeing or hearing.”

“Are you about to tell us some stories?”

“No, hon, not this time,” Gran said. Then to her friends she said, “Every time she hears me mention my daddy she thinks I’m gon’ tell stories.” She glanced around at his picture over the radio. “The ones that come to mind now, though, I sure can’t tell to children. Some of the stuff them Yankees did to people would make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. It makes me sick to think about it.”

“What did they do, Gran? What makes you sick?” Mary Jane asked.

“I’m not really gon’ be sick, hon. That’s just a saying too. You go on with your playing and don’t be paying so much attention to grown-up talk.”

“You don’t really think our soldiers would do any of that stuff now, do you?” Emma Lou asked. “This is not the same thing.”

“Well,” Gran said, “it sure feels like it to me. We got Yankee politicians stirring up the coloreds, carpetbaggers like that Reeves woman down here meddling in our schools, and the army butting in. My daddy used to say if it smells like a skunk, it probably is, and this mess sure stinks.”

At six-forty on Tuesday afternoon, five hundred members of the US Army’s elite 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, moved into position around Central High School. A subdued crowd of about a hundred citizens, mostly women and children, watched as the soldiers set up a tent camp behind the school.

A little more than two hours later, millions of Americans gathered around their radios and TVs to find out what Eisenhower had to say about the troops’ mission. All the Tates except Mary Jane waited in Sam’s living room. He wanted Billy to see history being made but that was not all. Sam also wanted to see how well Becky’s teaching had prepared his son to understand what was happening.

Earlier in the day, Tucker had dropped by the Otasco store with news about the unannounced school board meeting set for Wednesday night.

“I know you, Sam,” Tucker said, as the two men stood out back on the loading dock. “I can tell you’re more than a little partial to Becky Reeves, and seeing as how Billy is in her class, I thought you ought to know.”

“How’d you hear about it?”

“The superintendent called to see if my sister might be willing to start back teaching and commute from up at Smackover if they fire Becky. I told him she wouldn’t be any more interested now than she was when they asked her last summer. Anyway, Appleby said a bunch of parents are complaining and they’re gon’ be at the meeting.”

Sam had thought about Tucker’s news the rest of the day.

At nine o’clock, the president came on TV from the White House. He said he had been vacationing in Rhode Island but had flown back to Washington because, “I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, Jackson, and Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel and the firmness with which I intend to pursue this course until the orders of the federal court at Little Rock can be executed without interference.”

Eisenhower reviewed the history of the crisis then declared, “The very basis of our individual rights and freedoms rests upon the certainty that the president and the executive branch of government will support and ensure the carrying out of the decisions of the federal courts.” He said he was confident that most Arkansans were people of good will who would obey the law even if they disagreed with it. What he did not say was that he had called all ten thousand Arkansas National Guardsmen into federal service and ordered them to stand by at their respective armories. This would keep Faubus from trying to use them to complicate matters further.

“Well, Billy,” Sam asked, when Eisenhower finished, “did you understand the president?”

“Yes, sir, I think so. He said pretty much the same thing we’ve been studying at school. The courts have said what the law means and the president has to make everybody go by it. It don’t really matter if we like it or not.”

Sam let his son’s grammar pass.“Do you have any questions?”

“No, sir. I don’t think so.”

“Okay. Why don’t you go on to bed? We’ll see you in the morning.”

Gran said good night to Billy but otherwise kept quiet until he left the room. Then she said, frowning, “Sam, that Yankee teacher has plum ruined that boy. He don’t see nothing at all wrong with them soldiers coming down here and making our children go to school with coloreds. I can’t believe you’re letting her fill his head with this stuff.”

“Momma,” Sam said, “I know you’re not gon’ like hearing this, but times are changing. There’s not a thing anyone can do to stop integration of the schools. Someday Billy and Mary Jane both are gon’ have to deal with it, and I’d a whole lot rather they understand it than to go around beating their heads up against something they can’t do anything about. This way they can just concentrate on getting a good education.”

“You think that’s what I’m doing? Beating my head up against a wall? Good god in heaven! I don’t know what’s come over you. Has that Reeves woman got you all hot to trot? You better stay away from her. She ain’t fit for you.”

Sam kept silent for a moment then sat forward in his chair.

“Momma, I know all this is hard for you and I’m sorry about that. I’ve already said just about all I can about Billy’s schooling, but there is one more thing about Becky, and you may as well know about it. There are some parents that don’t like her any more than you do and they’re trying to get her fired. There’s a special school board meeting about it tomorrow night, and I’m going, and if I get a chance, I’m gon’ stick up for her because I think she’s doing a good job. Billy’s learning things he needs to know and he’s enjoying it. I want him to keep on.”

“Well, I don’t like it one bit.”

“I know you don’t and I’m sorry about that because I love you. But you and I are just gon’ have to agree to disagree about this.”

Gran looked at her son for a long moment then pulled herself up out of her chair. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

“500 US Troops Fly into Little Rock on Ike’s Orders.” “Southern Governors Prepare for Showdown on Rights.” The headlines seemed to explode across the top of the El Dorado Daily News on Wednesday morning. Having now signed up for home delivery, Becky read the paper over breakfast and decided immediately to use it in the day’s social studies lesson. The first two pages read almost like a textbook on federal versus states’ rights. One story described the arrival of the troops. Another quoted the president. Another quoted various southern governors. Most of them either condemned the president’s action or questioned the necessity of it, but by the time the troop planes stopped flying into Little Rock, there were more than one thousand soldiers in the city, with the federalized Arkansas National Guard available if needed.

By eight o’clock, Elizabeth Eckford and the other eight black Central High School students had gathered at Daisy Bates’s home just as they had two days earlier. This time, however, two jeeploads of heavily armed paratroopers escorted their station wagon to the front entrance of the school while military helicopters fluttered overhead. Angry segregationists lined the surrounding streets and shouted racial slurs but troops held them back with bayonets. A squad of twenty soldiers shepherded the nine students up Central’s front steps. Inside, paratroopers walked them to their various classes and stood guard outside the classroom doors. White students taunted the nine just like on Monday, but this time they made it through the entire school day. In the afternoon, members of the 101st Airborne took them safely back to Daisy Bates’s house.

Tomorrow they would try to do it all over again.