Creeping Realism

The South was led down the blind alley of blind resistance by Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus in September 1957, when he spurned both federal law and the sober advice of fellow citizens in his attempt to prevent integration at Little Rock's Central High School. Last week the South turned out of the blind alley and down the rocky road toward gradual acceptance of public-school integration with a competent new driver at the wheel. When Integration Day came to Virginia, white-maned Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr., lawyer enough to admit the legal death of his massive-resistance laws (TIME, Feb. 9), deployed elements of his 653-man state police force to prevent the rowdies from taking over and to give muscle to the general respect for law and order. Result: a state of order that made Virginia proud, Arkansas envious.

Critical test came in Norfolk, where, in a race-sensitive worker district, Norview High School was under order to open its doors to its 1,234 whites and seven Negro newcomers. Overly cautious, foresighted school officials delayed too long the day's most obvious move: unlocking the front doors. Hundreds of white pupils milled restlessly outside when the Negroes arrived, smiled hopefully, walked forward. Plainclothes police moved closer. Reporters, TV cameramen clustered noisily. "Hey, coon," hissed a leather-jacketed teenager, and reporters' pencils scribbled. But Virginia's Governor had not made riots respectable. Negro and white pupils solemnly waited for the doors to open, entered in orderly fashion to register for the new term. By week's end white youngsters were cautiously making friends with the newcomers, and all were at work to make up time lost since Governor Almond closed the school in September.

No Special Care. Five other Almond-locked Norfolk schools peacefully opened their doors to 5,126 whites and twelve Negro pupils. Just as peaceful was the enrollment of four Negro seventh-graders at Stratford Junior High in Arlington, Virginia-side Washington suburb. Wrote the editors of the Stratford school paper Signpost: "We have noticed that most of our classmates and friends don't especially care whether Negroes enter Stratford."

In Richmond. Governor Almond was careful to placate Senator Harry Flood Byrd's entrenched massive-resistance leaders. But he moved purposefully to consolidate the new coalition of moderates who helped him hold the line against the Byrdmen's drive for some last, Faubus-style gesture of defiance. "I don't feel defeated." said Almond, "just realistic." Carefully he picked 40 legislators for a commission to frame further resistance measures. Though segregationists all, the commission's members represented a gentle but firm shift away from control by the diehards from heavily Negro South-side Virginia, long the stronghold of Byrd control of the legislature.

Comes the Day. Almond-style realism even spread southward from Virginia. Georgia's Frank S. Twitty, downstater and house floor leader who herded the latest batch of segregation bills through the legislature, became the first important state politician to admit aloud that his laws might go the way of Virginia's. "If parents want to send their children to an integrated school--and I think there might be some--we'll give them that privilege," he said, though less perceptive politicians forced him into "clarification" by week's end. Even in never-retreat South Carolina, the Columbia Record looked with a moment's realism at Virginia. "Despite a resolve supported by sincere conviction," it said, "we in South Carolina may face such a Monday."

Saddest of the week's wiser men were in Little Rock, where Central High is still closed, and the Arkansas Democrat still alibis for its closer, Governor Orval E. Faubus. Noted the Democrat: "Virginia, in the light of larger knowledge than Little Rock had, conformed to the verdicts."

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