As the summer of 1957 came to an end, Arkansas had seemed an unlikely place for violent racial confrontation. With its relatively small percentage of blacks, it was like a border-state city, a place where race did not appear to be a hot political issue. A number of Arkansas school districts had already integrated without incident. Orval Faubus, the governor, was a hill-country populist seemingly devoid of racial prejudice. At first he had signaled his acquiescence to Brown and his support of the quite modest local plan to integrate Central. Indeed, it appeared that the entire white establishment was on board; Virgil Blossom, the superintendent, even had dreams of running for governor himself.
But as the first day of school approached, segregationists in Arkansas and throughout the Deep South began to pressure Faubus. The governor, ever shrewd and ever ambitious, was up for a third term the following year. He had sensed earlier than most that in the three years since Brown the issue had grown more emotional among poor whites in his state, and he understood all too well that if he did not try to block the integration of Central, he and his alleged softness on race might well be the defining issue in 1958. More, he already faced an unusually difficult political equation–he had no personal wealth; Arkansas voters were traditionally wary of giving any politician a third term, and he was not a lawyer, which meant that he could not make an easy lateral move to comfort and wealth as a lobbyist in Little Rock. He chose defiance: it was never personal with Faubus–it was simply a career choice.
So the crisis came. The most important correspondent on location was a young NBC reporter named John Chancellor. It was the first time in American history that the signature journalist on a major story represented a TV network. Chancellor was just 30, but he viscerally understood that he should keep his own narration to a minimum: what the camera was recording was far more powerful than any words he might add. One of his prime sources was Will Campbell, a white minister who was trying to aid and advise the black families. Campbell would return to his hotel room each day, turn on the set and watch Chancellor’s reports. What Chancellor had become, Campbell decided, was nothing less than a prophet. Like Biblical seers before him, he was defining sin–for an audience of millions. Though Chancellor’s exact words on air were understated, Campbell realized, what he might as well have been saying as the images rolled across the screen was: ““This is a sin. . . . This is a sin. . . . This is a sin.''
For other white Southern politicians, Little Rock’s lessons were obvious. Moderates were vulnerable, and the best position was one that pre-empted the racist territory–a safe Southern pol was someone who said ““Never.’’ Ambitious politicians, watching as Faubus went on to win four more elections, learned the benefits of the race card. Faubus would beget others like him, notably George Wallace. Running as a populist in 1958, Wallace was beaten in Alabama. He vowed he would never be outniggered again.
But as the story began to play out in what was now a wired nation, ordinary Americans were forced to take sides. Certainly that was the way Martin Luther King and the talented young men around him saw it. King, restless with the molasses-like pace of integration, wanting both the American people and the American government to make a moral judgment about themselves and their country, immediately understood the long-range benefits of confrontations like Little Rock. The key was to lure the beast of segregation out in the open. Casting was critical: King and his aides were learning that they needed to find the right venue, a place where the resistance was likely to be fierce, and the right local official to play the villain. Neither was a problem: King had no trouble finding men like Wallace and Bull Connor, who were in their own way looking for him, just as he was looking for them. In time, the national dynamic proved stronger than the regional one. Seven years after Little Rock, much moved by violent confrontation in Alabama and Mississippi, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and a year later, after a fateful televised clash with Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma, Ala., the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
