Moderates' Defeat

After three worsening years of acrimony and litigation, the five moderate members of the Little Rock school board--segregationists who believe in complying with Federal law--last week resigned in a mood of "utter hopelessness, helplessness and frustration." Left as the board's sole remaining member: Supreme Court-flouting Segregationist Dr. Dale Alford, who won a larger triumph a fortnight ago, when he captured the House of Representatives' seat of Moderate Congressman Brooks Hays on a write-in vote.

Quietly, Board President Wayne Upton told why the five members gave up: "We were tired of being Governor Orval Faubus' whipping boys. He had used us to win or help win three elections. Our integration plan would have worked if it hadn't been for political interference." Out along with the rest of the board: School Superintendent Virgil T. Blossom. Before quitting, the board voted over Alford's objection to dismiss Blossom, pay him $19,741.41 for the remaining 19 months of his contract. But by week's end the segregationist machinery had produced a taxpayer's suit charging collusion, postponed payment.

Little Rock will choose a new school board Dec. 6. Wrote the resigning members pointedly: "This election will give the voters . . . their first opportunity to express a clear-cut choice as to whether we have public schools in Little Rock or not . . . We deplore the interruption or termination of the education of so many of Little Rock's children .. . Somewhere in their consideration of the matters involved, all citizens of this community must remember that this responsibility begins with them."

By week's end, a move to replace the resigned members with six of the town's leading bankers fizzled when the bankers politely declined. For a while it seemed that there might be no new board; but before the deadline, 15 citizens, most of them known segregationists, filed for the six posts. Facing the new board after its election: a ruling last week by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ordering continued desegregation of Little Rock schools.

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