THE PRESIDENCY: The Same Crisis

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Twenty minutes after the President arrived at a farewell party for retiring Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson, an aide passed him a message. Ike beckoned to Mamie. "What—another crisis?" she asked. "The same one," he replied. The President sped downtown to his office in the White House, conferred with Attorney General Herbert Brownell, pored over a press association Teletype copy that lay before him. "Well," said Ike, "I guess we've still got this problem with us."

The problem was that Arkansas' Governor Orval Eugene Faubus had once more wrecked a responsible attempt to reestablish the rule of law in Little Rock and to restore the kind of peaceful climate in which his state might get back into step with the rest of the nation industrially, socially, politically, emotionally. This time Faubus had crossed up not only the President of the U.S. but four Southern governors who had worked tirelessly since the recent Southern Governors' Conference at Sea Island, Ga. to find an acceptable peace formula. One of these Southern governors, a Southern-born, Southern-reared Democrat, considered Faubus' latest move and threw up his hands. "We had a very clear understanding with this guy," he said. "He's emotionally unbalanced, I guess. There's no other explanation for the way he's acting."

"Not to Obstruct." The week of disappointment began as a week of hope. The four governors—North Carolina's Luther Hodges, Florida's LeRoy Collins, Maryland's Republican Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, Tennessee's Frank Clement—drove up to the west side entrance of the White House to keep their appointment. (Missing: Georgia's Faubus-like Governor Marvin Griffin, who backed out at the last minute.) Their historic mission was to try to arrange with the President terms for the withdrawal of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division from Little Rock. Specifically, they proposed that 1) Faubus make a formal declaration that he would now assume responsibility for law and order in Little Rock and also that he "would not obstruct" federal court orders to integrate Little Rock's Central High School; whereupon 2) the President should turn back the federalized Arkansas National Guard to state control and pull out the paratroopers "as soon as practicable," i.e., when order has been restored and the court-ordered integration enforced.