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senses, can stir them to action, can make them realize that no one else can do for them the job they must do for themselves—then you, too will feel that it has indeed served a purpose. We honor you today in your adversity. We pledge to you not sympathy but action.”69 Another show of support came at an enormous public rally held on May 19 at Robinson Auditorium, with approximately 350 white teachers attending . The purged teachers were seated on the stage facing the 2,000 in attendance to hear the remarks of the many speakers supporting them and the recall effort. All members of STOP had received invitations, and the WEC telephone chain had also promoted attendance. However, Malcolm Taylor, the president of the CCC, hoped to complicate these plans by giving a statement to newsmen the day before claiming that “many Negroes, including Negro teachers, are planning to attend the integrationist rally. . . . These Negroes will be seated alongside the whites in all parts of the auditorium.”70 Drew Agar, a STOP leader, responded that police would be present to “gently” turn away any Negroes seeking to attend. A local black minister announced that a separate rally for Negroes would be held in a different location the same night as the white gathering.71 Thus, on the same evening as the STOP rally, the five black purged teachers and principals were honored at the Dunbar Community Center in a rally attended by 75 teachers and 500 others . After two hours of oratory, those in attendance were encouraged to vote in the recall election. Onstage was an enlarged replica ballot with instructions to “Mark your ballot like this,” showing attendees that they needed to recall McKinley, Laster, and Rowland.72 On May 16, eleven days after the purge and more than a week after the formation of STOP, M. L. Moser, the pastor of Central Missionary Baptist Church, announced the existence of the Committee to Retain Our Segregated Schools (CROSS). Moser said that its purpose was to recall the three moderate members of the school board who had walked out prior to the teacher purge. On May 21, Moser ran an advertisement in the Arkansas Democrat stating that the teachers had been fired for “teaching alien doctrine, incompetence , breaking and entering, trespassing on private property, invasion of privacy, punishment, intimidation of students and immorality.”73 The teachers promptly brought a $3,900,000 libel suit against Moser and LRSD board president Ed McKinley. Eugene Warren, an attorney for the Little Rock Classroom Teachers Association, represented the white purged teachers . Each of the teachers asked for $100,000, alleging that he or she had been libeled by Moser’s advertisement. The suit said the advertisement 146 ■ WHY NOT BLAME THE TEACHERS? “openly and maliciously charged the plaintiffs with immorality, incompetence , want of professional capacity and unprofessional conduct.” This advertisement probably strengthened the resolve of purged teachers, as well as their supporters.74 The five purged black teachers belonged to a different teachers’ association and were not parties to this particular suit. The same day that the advertisement ran, Elizabeth Huckaby managed to deliver her parents’ absentee ballots for the recall election. She played a more direct role in the recall campaign than some other teachers did, assisting both the AAUW and the WEC with contact information and materials regarding the purged teachers.75 Indeed, Huckaby was a whirlwind of activity throughout the twenty-day period between the purge and the recall vote. In those same weeks, she and her brother Bill, on behalf of their aging parents, made a down payment on the house next door to her own. She went by her parents’ home on Scott Street almost daily, but after her father’s hospitalization in the spring and at the suggestion of her husband, Glen, they decided to move them in next door. In the midst of the purge, in other words, Elizabeth Huckaby was not only going to work every day, helping different groups gather information, joining in lawsuits, and gathering ballots for her parents, but completing legal documents for a home purchase, filling out forms to change her parents’ address, cleaning the house next door, and helping her parents pack, while her husband did yeoman’s work in the yard and on the structure of the house next door.76 LRSD board president Ed McKinley said publicly that he was completely unfamiliar with the Arkansas Democrat ad and that he “had nothing to do with...

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