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54 Who Is for Law and Order? The Little Rock school riot* by the white people of that city raises the most serious question in U.S. history. If white people defy the Constitution, who then are the law-abiding citizens of the United States and who is for democracy? For years untold numbers of colored people have been forced to maneuver in all directions, trying to avoid a head-on collision over the issue. They have allowed white people to name them “Negroes,” by which the whites mean a thing and not a person. They have stayed out of the public parks, restaurants, hotels, and golf courses, walked on the cinder path when meeting whites on the sidewalk, gone to separate schools, worked on the worst jobs under the worst conditions, smiled and acted unhurt when abused in public places. They have fought in two world wars and one Civil War when told by the whites they were fighting for democracy and the American way of life. All of this bowing and scraping was done to preserve and promote unity between the races. For years the colored people in the South accepted this way of life. Then suddenly they made an about-face and began pressing for the human rights the Constitution says the American people have a right to. Through their pressure and the legal work of the NAACP, the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that the Constitution of the United States is valid even if it has never been upheld by the white citizens of the United States. They began to denounce the use by the whites of the word “Negro” and began forcing whites to call them “colored.” Because when whites say “colored,” they have to say a colored man or colored woman, and when they use the word “man” or “woman” they are beginning to accept colored people as human beings. They started legal battles for the right to use public parks and public places. They began to go to white schools on the grounds that a country cannot be united and yet separated. * In the fall of 1957, nine black students (who became known as the Little Rock nine) attempting to enroll in the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, faced the opposition of white mobs and Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who ordered the National Guard to prevent the students from enrolling. Following weeks of negotiations, mob violence, and finally Faubus’s refusal to comply with the federal court order, President Eisenhower was forced to send federal troops to Little Rock, opening the way for the students’ admission to Central.This was the first use of federal power to enforce equal treatment of African Americans in the South since Reconstruction, and the weeks-long crisis became a flashpoint in the civil rights movement as well one of the earliest major news stories of the still young television era.Boggs’s column was one of three (the other two were unsigned) in this issue of Correspondence that discussed the Little Rock desegregation crisis, all under the banner “Events in Little Rock Mark the End of an Era.” —Ed. Ward.indb 54 12/21/10 9:27 AM Who Is for Law and Order? 55 They denounced the idea that they must have the approval of whites before they can act and denounced the liberals who straddled the fence and said whites have to be educated into accepting colored people as equals. They have denounced the reasons why they should have fought in the last war for democracy when no democracy exists for them at home. In every instance where colored people have defied the status quo, they have been the first to ask for law and order. From Clinton, Tennessee, to Sturgis, Kentucky, from Nashville to Little Rock, the colored people have asked that they be given protection of the law in the form of city police or state or federal troops.* It has been the white people in every instance who have defied these troops. The Little Rock crisis has put an end to the era of the white man’s burden to preserve democracy and to bring the colored man up to the white man’s standards of civilization. The white man’s burden now is to prove that he believes in democracy and that he can follow the example of the colored people in upholding law and order. [ October 1957 ] * In each of these places, black children and...

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