The Fifties

by David Halberstam

No one, of course, gained more than Orval Faubus. He portrayed himself as the victim of massive federal intervention, the lonely man who believed in states’ rights and the will of his own people. No longer could any good (white) citizen of Arkansas be for segregation and against Faubus. A third term, which had seemed unlikely before Little Rock, was guaranteed. With two moderate candidates running against him in 1958, he beat their combined total of votes by more than two to one. A fourth term followed. And a fifth term. And finally a sixth. On occasion there was talk of retirement, but he had, wrote the Arkansas Gazette, ridden off into more sunsets than Tom Mix. His decision to block integration set the stage for a generation of Southern politicians, most notably George Wallace, who had learned from Little Rock how to manipulate the anger within the South, how to divide a state by class and race, and how to make the enemy seem to be the media. The moderate position had been badly undermined at Little Rock, and an era of confrontation was to follow, Harry Ashmore wrote prophetically in Life in 1958.