STOP over CROSS

In ordinary time and clime, the election would have been of less than routine interest to most Americans; six unknown men were running to retain their places on the school board of a fair-sized U.S. city. But this was Little Rock, 20 months after segregationist rioting blazed into world headlines and 8 1/2-months after the high schools closed rather than permit Negro children to sit with whites. This election was, in fact, a crucial test of whether Little Rock was ready to begin its return to sanity. Little Rock was.

The contest sprang from an attempt by three segregationist members of the six-member Little Rock school board to fire 44 high school teachers (TIME, May 25) accused not of professional failure but of holding "imprudent" attitudes toward segregation. Shocked at the suggestion, the board's three moderate members walked out, began boycotting board sessions. Around them rallied some of Little Rock's most respected groups, including the P.T.A. Council, the ministerial alliance, and the Chamber of Commerce board.

The Prostrate Form. An organization named STOP (the Committee to Stop This Outrageous Purge) was quickly formed, just as quickly got 9,603 signatures on a petition demanding the ouster of the segregationists. In retaliation, segregationists formed CROSS (the Committee to Retain Our Segregated Schools), which filed its own petition demanding the recall of the moderates.

Inevitably, into the bitter recall election that resulted stepped the man who, by his inflammatory statements and suggestions, had set off Little Rock's integration explosion in the first place. In a pair of televised speeches. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus put prestige and passion squarely behind CROSS, dismissed STOP as "a smokescreen behind which the integrationists now move forward." Said Faubus: "When there is an attempt to force something bad or something thought to be bad upon the children of this state, I will resist such force with all my might, and it will pass only by trampling over my prostrate form." Confident that his ability to sway sentiment was as great as ever, Faubus went off on a fishing trip. And last week, while he was gone. Little Rock went to the polls, ousted all three segregationists by margins of 1,500 to 2,500 votes out of 26,000 cast, kept the three moderates in office.

Strong Evidence. The election was the strongest, clearest evidence of responsible moderation that Arkansas has seen since its crisis began. Orval Faubus, hurrying back to Little Rock, tried to pass it off as having nothing to do with the integration issue. It meant, said he. merely that Little Rock's citizens believe in job security for teachers. But a Southern paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, said it more accurately: "It is significant for all the South in showing that even in a community as emotion-tossed as Little Rock, a majority of the voters in time will prefer a school system with some integration to no schools at all."

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