"Just Around tne Backbone of North America"

LITTLE ROCK (291 alt., 120,000 pop.) cap and ldg city of Ark.; 3 R.R. lines (Mo. Pac., Chi. Rock Is. & Pac., St. Louis S. Western), 26 truck lines, 8 bus lines, 5 airlines 32 fits dly; Accoms: 20 hotels, 34 motels; Swim: Y.M.C.A. 6th St. and Bdwy; Misc: 250 churches, 8 banks, one federal res., 5 savings and loan assoc'ns. Ark. Livestock Show and Rodeo, Oct. (North Little Rock). Caution: jaywalking some sts punishable $5 fine; Avge mean temp: 80 deg. summer, 45 deg. winter.

The City. Little Rock lies almost at the geographic center of Arkansas; its character is that of a meeting place between the alluvial Old South counties of the east and the hilly Old Frontier and Ozark counties of the west. It is a pleasant, leisurely place of well-tended homes and green lawns where violets and jonquils bloom in spring, chrysanthemums in autumn. It is a diversified light-industry city that makes its living above all from nonnative enterprises--the Arkansas state government; the Missouri Pacific Railroad repair yards in North Little Rock; the nearby Little Rock Air Force Base (biggest employer)--and as such, before the crisis, had no one thing to demand its attention. General Douglas MacArthur is from Little Rock, so are fictional Lorelei Lee of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ("I'm Just a Little Girl from Little Rock") and Nellie Forbush of South Pacific. Says one Little Rock citizen: "It's always been an easygoing town--hunting or fishing on Sunday. If you don't want to do too much, it's great."

Early Life. Originally a moss-grown rock landmark jutting out from the south bank of the Arkansas River, Little Rock was named by Explorer Benard de la Harpe in 1722, settled by William Lewis of Virginia in 1812, made capital of the Arkansas Territory in June 1821. A boisterous village at the crossing of two frontier arteries --the Arkansas River and the Great Southwest Trail--Little Rock attracted settlers and travelers such as Davy Crockett, who said in 1834: "If I could rest anywhere it would be in Arkansaw where the men are of the real half-horse, half-alligator breed such as grow nowhere else on the face of the universal earth but just around the backbone of North America."

Little Rock grew by cotton culture and by steamboat glamour--creaking wharves piled high with cotton bales for loading on shallow-draft paddle-wheelers such as Reindeer, Cinderella and Spy--and Little Rock seceded along with Arkansas and the Old South from the Union in 1861. Two years later Little Rock was captured by the Union Army without a fight, set about treating the Union men courteously. And when the Confederacy and Reconstruction were done with, Little Rock grew--from 12,000 in 1870 to 26,000 in 1890 and 46,000 in 1910--and became a state-capital leader in luxuries such as electric trolleys and street lights, telephones, and Sarah Bernhardt appearing at the Forest Park Theater in Camille.

Industry & Race. Heavy federal spending paced the construction of 200-plus light factories in Little Rock, but Arkansas lagged far behind in terms of per-capita income ($979 in 1954, compared to the U.S.'s average $1,770) and population growth (between 1940 and 1955, 8% of the population drifted away). Recently, Arkansas businessmen and officials, led by Businessman-Philanthropist Winthrop Rockefeller (TIME, Sept. 24, 1956 et seq.) have put on an industrial-development drive that brought in or expanded 194 industries, created 12,500 new jobs, sent per-capita income up by 9.3% in one amazing year--1956. But then came the Faubus crisis. "This," says a Chamber of Commerce spokesman, "cannot be a plus in areas where new plants come from. This is going to set back our program considerably."

Paradoxically (or pre-Faubus), Little Rock had long enjoyed better race relations than almost any other Intermediate South city of comparable size. Little Rock Negroes, 23% of the population, work beside whites in plants, ride with them in desegregated buses, can send qualified children to desegregated, state-supported colleges. "We were probably going to do all right with schools, too," said one Little Rock citizen as he sadly surveyed the wreck that Orval Faubus and the mobs had wrought. "Not that many people were much in favor of integration, but they were going along with it because it was the law. This is a law-abiding town."

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