Attack from Behind

For 16 years, Arkansas Congressman Brooks Hays worked conscientiously for the U.S. from an increasingly senior Foreign Affairs Committee seat, for his state on projects such as the Arkansas River development program. But Moderate Hays, who is also president of the 9,000,000-member Southern Baptist Convention, attempted in addition to smooth the inevitable course of integration; in mid-1957 he brought President Eisenhower and Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus together at Newport, R.I. in an attempt to forestall the Little Rock crisis. Among Little Rock white supremacists, Brooks Hays, 60, has been unpopular ever since. Last week they kicked him out of Congress with a write-in campaign covertly sponsored by Orval Faubus.

The campaign caught Hays by surprise; in last July's primary he handily defeated a segregationist opponent, seemed sure of a ninth term. But then Dr. Dale Alford, 42, a Little Rock ophthalmologist and school-board member, announced against him as "Your Democratic Write-in." Public Service Commissioner and onetime Faubus Executive Secretary Claude Carpenter Jr. took over Alford's campaign. And Governor Faubus made discreet phone calls on behalf of Alford.

Hays tried to blunt the attack with another Southern Governor's endorsement, got Mississippi's James Plemon Coleman, an old friend, to come to his rescue. "The South needs you in her great struggle," announced Coleman bravely. Nevertheless, Hays lost by 1,200 votes out of 60,000. Last week Brooks Hays revealed how precarious has become the Southern moderate position. Said he of Coleman, already under attack at home: "I hope the people of Mississippi won't hold him responsible for my views."

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