At the Crossroads

The traditional cry broke the cathedral silence of the marble courtroom: "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before the honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to draw nigh and give their attention, for the court is now sitting. God save the United States and this honorable court." The nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, convened in extraordinary session, took their places at the bench. On the right, facing the justices, sat counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, petitioners. On the left sat counsel for the Little Rock school board, respondents. Near by, in traditional cutaway and striped trousers sat Solicitor General J. Lee Rankin, representing the U.S. as amicus curiae (friend of the court). The issue before the court, like all great issues, was basically simple: whether the rule of law or of violence should prevail at Little Rock's Central High School. The legal situation was more complicated. Last June Federal Judge Harry J. Lemley of Arkansas' Eastern District ordered a 2 1/2-year breathing-spell delay in integration at Little Rock. Last month in St. Louis, the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court reversed Judge Lemley's ruling, but later granted a 3O-day stay of integration, to let the school board present its case to the Supreme Court. Technically, before the Supreme Court last week was an N.A.A.C.P. motion to vacate the 30-day stay. But the U.S., represented by its Solicitor General, had suggested what the N.A.A.C.P. had not: that the Supreme Court go beyond the question of the 30-day stay, rule on Judge Lemley's June decision, and thereby go straight to the heart of the nation's most weighty domestic problem.

Recognized Rights. Five minutes after noon, Chief Justice Earl Warren's nod brought the N.A.A.C.P.'s special counsel, Thurgood Marshall, slowly to his feet; to him, more than to anyone else in the room, this session, however important, was just another battle in a long, long war. Almost serenely, Marshall reviewed the legal history of the case. The N.A.A.C.P., he said, sought only one thing: protection of the right of seven Negro children to stay on at Little Rock's Central High School. "The rights we are seeking protection for are not rights that are in the abstract," said Counselor Marshall. "The rights we seek are rights that have been recognized by the federal courts." Taking his cue from the Justice Department brief already filed, Marshall also urged the Supreme Court to go beyond the motion before it, to rule on Judge Lemley's original decision. "The way the case stands," said Marshall, "there must be a definitive decision, so that in Arkansas there will be no doubt that the orders of the court cannot be interfered with ... by obstructionists and mob action . . ." Finally, just before he sat down, Thurgood Marshall's voice broke. "When a bank is robbed you don't close the bank," he cried. "You put the bank robbers in jail."

Time to Work. Into the silence that followed moved tall, courtly Richard C. Butler, attorney for the beleaguered Little Rock school board and its man-in-the-middle, Superintendent Virgil Blossom. Butler went calmly, rationally to his major point: the school board had done its level best to integrate Central High School; peaceable integration had been prevented by social turmoil and other outside pressures; Little Rock needed "time to work in a period of peace and harmony rather than turmoil and strife."

Then Richard Butler ran into trouble. If, he said, Judge Lemley's 2 1/2-year breathing spell were granted, then a "national policy" on desegregation could be established to guide law-abiding Southerners. National policy? Justice Felix Frankfurter darted at the phrase. "Why aren't the two [desegregation] decisions of this court . . . 'national policy?' " he asked. Butler hesitated, replied slowly: "It was not anticipated at the time the plan was formulated that the Governor of the State of Arkansas would call out troops to keep integration in the schools from taking place." Felix Frankfurter shook his head impatiently, snapped back: "The Governor's calling out troops isn't the same thing as the uncertainty of what the law is." The continuity of his argument broken, Lawyer Butler tried to pick up the thread, blundered dramatically.

"This school board in Little Rock," he said, "was not faced with theories; it was faced with actualities," and Arkansas officials, including the state's government, must deal with that fact. Butler turned to Earl Warren for confirmation of the problems a Governor must face. "Mr. Chief Justice," he said, "you have been the Governor of a great state . . ." He was saying the wrong thing to the wrong man. Earl Warren, three times Governor of California, cut Butler off in midsentence. Yes, he had been a Governor--"but I never tried to resolve any legal problem of this kind as Governor of my state. I thought that was a matter for the courts, and I abided by the decision of the courts."

Precious Heritage. It was now time to hear from the U.S. Before the bench came James Lee Rankin, 51, Nebraska-born Solicitor General of the U.S. since 1956, a topflight lawyer but never known as a great courtroom advocate. He was a great one this day as he spoke, his voice heavy, in eloquent statement of the basic values which must at last decide the great desegregation struggle.

"It seems to me," said Rankin, "that we are now at the crossroads in this important question. The people of the country are entitled to a definitive statement from the court as to whether force and violence will prevail ... In some places school integration will take time, longer time than in others . . . But you must have a start." Throughout, the chamber sat quiet, the justices immobile, Thurgood Marshall with a slight scowl. Little Rock's Superintendent Virgil Blossom and Arkansas' Democratic Senator William Fulbright (on hand as a friend of the court to ask for more time in Little Rock) staring somberly ahead. Lee Rankin continued: "I am confident that as the years go by, the people of the South will realize that they have a stake in each American citizen being a full citizen . . . The basic question--all there really is in the case--is whether or not we stand as a Government of the U.S. in all its power and strength as well as its consideration of the difficulties and problems that are real . . . We insist that there must be a rule of law. We will not abandon the heritage that has been delivered to us by the efforts of man over centuries."

The Supreme Court had heard all sides, but it was not to be rushed into headlong decision. It set a second hearing for Sept. 11, four days before Central High School was then expected to open. Then the battle of Little Rock will presumably enter a new, perhaps climactic, phase.

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