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- 112 Chapter Nine FRONT AND CENTER With Judge John Miller no longer exercising authority over the proceedings in the case of Aaron v. Cooper, Orval Faubus’s victory in state court would be short-lived. Wiley Branton immediately filed a petition in federal court on behalf of the NAACP to overturn the decision, and the case was quickly assigned to Judge Ronald Davies of Fargo, North Dakota, who issued a stay and scheduled a hearing for Friday afternoon at 3:30. By the end of the day on Friday, he had issued an order enjoining interference of the plan by all involved. Finally, a federal judge had acted with sufficient resolve to enforce federal law. In writing to Robert Carter, NAACP counsel in New York, on August 31, 1957, summarizing the events of the week, Bates ended her letter presciently with the phrase, “in spite of it all, some Negroes will enter or be found trying come Tuesday, September 2.” She began the letter by saying, “We have been in a legal dither here in Arkansas for the last few days.”1 Legal dither, indeed. Suits were being lobbed into court with the regularity of mortar fire. In addition to a suit filed by developer William F. Rector as a stalking horse for Faubus, Eva Wilbun filed suit to set up segregated schools for white children. On August 26, the Arkansas attorney general sued the NAACP for more than $5,000 for failing to pay corporate franchise taxes in the previous seven years. A suit had also just been filed by ten black ministers, supported by the Little Rock NAACP, challenging the “four segregation acts” passed by the Arkansas legislature.2 At a meeting of the Legal Redress Committee on the August 30, George Howard Jr. was selected as local counsel to defend the franchise tax suit against the NAACP.3 In her letter to Carter, Bates added, “As of now I hold the world’s record for crosses burned on lawns of houses. The third one-Sunday, August 25, 8 feet tall was set ablaze on my lawn and Wednesday, 1:a.m. August 28, a bottle was thrown through my plate glass picture window. We now have flood lighted the place and placed guards around the house at night.”4 Bates sent copies to Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, and Gloster Current. If August was hectic for Bates, nothing in her life would compare with September, for Faubus was about to make his fateful decision to surround Central High with the Arkansas National Guard and prevent the Little Rock Nine from entering. In her letter to Carter, Bates referred to the testimony given by Faubus and others in Murray Reed’s court as “trumped up.” Certainly, that was to be the view of not just Daisy and L. C. but of those who opposed the governor in the coming months. The governor’s enemies were not necessarily Bates’s friends, though there were some whites she would come to like and admire and with whom she would maintain contact for much of her life. Generally, as suggested in the previous chapter, Bates would not be able to trust white moderates, for they would prove only too willing to follow Faubus and the Capital Citizens Council down the path to continued segregation when it appeared he might somehow be successful. Now that the governor of the state had testified under oath about Little Rock citizens arming themselves, the number of children willing to enter Central High on Tuesday after the Labor Day holiday dropped from sixteen to nine. As late as Saturday, August 31, Blossom had been expecting “fifteen or sixteen” students to show up on Tuesday. It seems likely that Bates spent the weekend trying to keep parents and students from changing their minds. She and L. C. were now used to harassment, and though it had to bother her, there is no indication at this point she expected it to escalate into violence against the children and their parents. In his interview about the period before the events at Central High, Oscar Eckford could have been speaking for Bates as well when he said that when a white man in authority told you something, you knew he had the power to make it happen. Thus if the white power structure decided that a few blacks were going to enter Central High, it was something you could count on. Bates most feared individual acts of terror—someone driving by...

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