70 Year Magazine Archive

Right and Power in Arkansas

by James Jackson Kilpatrick

At stake in Arkansas, says a distinguished Southern editor, are the community’s right to peace and the state’s power to protect it

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On the evening of Monday, September 2, which was Labor Day, Governor Orval E. Fanbus of Arkansas issued certain orders to his National Guard, and early on the morning of Wednesday, the fourth, pursuant to those orders, more than a hundred members of the Guard took up stations of duty around Little Rock’s Central High School.

The troops were posted, said Governor Faubus, solely to keep the peace. The troops were posted, retorted the Governor’s angry critics, solely to block racial integration of the high school. And because the Governor’s critics are more numerous and more articulate than his supporters, the story has gone forth to the country of a “defiant” state executive acting from anti-Negro bias.

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