Hoodlums in Arkansas

VAN BUREN, ARK. (pop. 7,300), once-important frontier post, stagecoach stopover on Arkansas River in north-central Arkansas, corn, livestock, truck-crop center, home town of Humorist Bob Burns, few Negroes.

Thirteen Negro youngsters went back to Van Buren High School along with 600 whites in Van Buren's second year of court-ordered integration. They expected little if any trouble. Last year even Governor Faubus boasted in his progressive moments about how successful integration had been in other places than Little Rock Central High School. Arkansas communities integrated last year: Fort Smith. Fayetteville, Bentonville, Charleston, Hoxie, Ozark. Hot Springs, Van Buren. But this year the Negroes were welcomed back to Van Buren High by a band of 40 to 50 white boys, mostly duck-tailed types, jeering, catcalling, howling, holding up placards that read: NIGGERS GO HOME! CHICKEN WHITES go TO SCHOOL WITH JIGS! One night the whites burned a Negro in effigy on the school flagpole. The white hoodlums proclaimed a school strike, sent off a telegram to Governor Faubus: IN ORDER TO STAY INTEGRATION WE NEED YOUR HELP. Said Faubus, in theory a state Governor with police powers to dispel unlawful assemblies: "I don't know what to do about the Van Buren situation. I'll have to check into it." And although the great majority of Van Buren's white children ignored the strike call and went to school, it was the hoodlums who won. Number of Negroes attending Van Buren on the third day of school: not 13. but three. Number of Negroes attending on the fourth day: not three, but none. Once more, court orders notwithstanding, Van Buren High was lily-white.

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