The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL By ROY V. HARRIS

I am going back to Little Rock.

I spent nearly a year at Camp Pike out from Little Rock in 1917 and 1918. In 1956, I went to the town of England, a few miles below Little Rock, and spoke to a citizens' council meeting.

Then, I was back in Little Rock for my third trip in August of 1957.

On this last trip, Governor Griffin and I spoke to a dinner meeting of the Capital Citizens' Council at a downtown hotel in Little Rock.

We were there just a few weeks before school opened in September and since September, things have been happening in Little Rock.

When Governor Griffin and I were in Little Rock, the local school board was planning to integrate the whites and Negroes in the Central High School. They had advised the world that they would have a model system of integration at Central High School.

This model could be followed by all the rest of the schools in the South and in the Nation.

Just before school opened the people of Little Rock rose up and demanded that their officials do something about it. Up until that time they had had no help and no cooperation from the officials in Little Rock or in the state capitol.

In his campaign for election, Governor Faubus had stated emphatically that he was opposed to integration in any community unless the people wanted it. They reminded Governor Faubus of his promise.

Governor Faubus reached the conclusion that there would be trouble in Little Rock if the race mixing in Central High School proceeded as planned by the local school board and as directed by a federal court order.

So, on the day before school opened he called out the National Guard and stated that the only way to prevent violence and bloodshed would be for the National Guard to keep the Negroes out of Central High School.

He called out the National Guard and no Negroes entered.

Then, the President of the United States issued a proclamation stating that groups of people had assembled in Little Rock to prevent the enforcement of the court decision and ordered them to disperse.

Before this order could reach Little Rock, he sent one thousand paratroopers flying into Little Rock armed to the teeth. He nationalized the Arkansas National Guard to the number of 10,800.

This gave the President 11,800 troops at his command.

The paratroopers went out and rounded up nine little Negroes, hauled them to Central High School in government-owned station wagons and by force and arms placed them in Central High School.

Guards were set up all around the school grounds, in the school buildings and in some of the class rooms and school proceeded while Little Rock was in a state of siege by federal forces.

The first day the wires of the news services flashed two very significant pictures to all the newspapers in America.

One of these showed paratroopers with bayonets fixed in the backs of young schoolgirls forcing them along the streets a block or more away from the school building.

The second was of a decent, law-abiding citizen of Arkansas with blood pouring down his face and across the front of his shirt from his own head where his scalp had been burst open by the butt of a paratrooper's rifle.

These were strange happenings in the United States of America.

This was something that we hadn't seen since the days of Reconstruction in America.

Here we had a great general serving as President of the United States using the soldiers of our own country to harass, beat and stab our own people.

When these two pictures flashed from the front-pages of the newspapers over America, people everywhere stopped and wondered what was happening.

Isn't this kind of thing the reason we oppose Communism? Isn't this the kind of thing that has stirred our emotions to the point that we were willing to fight wars against dictators?

Since that day, Little Rock has been a symbol. Little Rock has been the symbol of the fight for freedom and liberty and constitutional government in the United States of America.

Little Rock has taught us how easy it would be for a dictator sitting in the White House to take over the government and regulate the lives and the business of the people of this nation at the point of a bayonet.

Eisenhower, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces could have easily sent the Army, Navy and Air Force into Arkansas and placed the whole state in a state of siege.

He could just as easily have taken the soldiers and the sailors and jabbed the people of every town in Arkansas in the back with federal bayonets while jet fighters filled with bombs zoomed overhead.

Little Rock may seem little to some people. But for hundreds of years Little Rock will be the symbol for the fight for freedom, the right of local self-government and of constitutional government among the people of this nation.

As I write this the little Negroes have entered school again. Nine hundred National Guardsmen were there to see to it.

I go back to Little Rock this time to speak on the night of the 14th of January to another meeting of the Capital Citizens' Council at a downtown hotel.

When I go back this time it shall be for the purpose of paying tribute and my respects to the fine white people of that great city and the great state that has stood up and fought for the purity of the white race and the integrity of both the white and Negro races.

When I go back it will be for the purpose of extending my personal thanks and appreciation to these fine white people of Little Rock who have fought to maintain freedom and liberty in this country and who have stood flatfootedly for restoring constitutional government in America.

These people who have kept the torch of liberty burning deserve the praise and the thanks of all liberty-loving people in America.

When I go back it will be to give my personal thanks and express my personal appreciation to Governor Faubus of Arkansas for his contribution to the fight for liberty and freedom and for the restoration of constitutional government.

Regardless of what his sentiments and views have been in the past, he has rendered the cause of constitutional government in America a great service and he deserves the praise and the thanks of the people of America.

When I go back, I shall certainly convey to Governor Faubus and these fine people in Arkansas greetings from the people of Georgia and I believe that I will speak the truth when I tell them that over ninety percent of the white people of Georgia are indeed grateful to the people of Little Rock and Governor Faubus of Arkansas.

If the people of Little Rock stand pat they have General Eisenhower over a barrel.

If they stand pat it will be necessary for Eisenhower to keep troops in Central High School so long as he remains in the White House.

If it becomes necessary for him to keep troops in Central High School from now until January, 1961, he will become the laughing stock of this nation.

Little Rock has forcibly brought home to the people of the nation the fact that the people of the South will not stand for race mixing either by court decree or at the point of federal bayonets.

Little Rock should by now have convinced the race mixers, the Communists, the so-called liberals, the crackpots, the pinks and the punks of the nation that there are not enough soldiers in this country to lay siege to every town and community in the South and to force race mixing in the public schools.

To do that would require the use of troops in nearly every public school in at least seven states.

These facts alone should be a sobering influence to all of the crackpots, the Communists, the socialists and the liberals and pinks and punks who are trying to bring about this dastardly crime on white people everywhere.

The resistance in Little Rock gave inspiration and courage to people, not only in the South, but to white people in every community in America where the race mixing fanatics are trying to force white people to mix and mingle with the Negro race.

The race mixers have been preaching to us that in this day and time, the United States should assume the leadership of the world. They have been preaching to us that in this day of missiles, sputniks and the development of hydrogen bombs, and other forms of nuclear energy, it is necessary that we mix the white and Negro races in this country in order to combat the influence of Communism abroad.

They say that it is impossible for us to assume a position of world leadership unless we establish at home such an example.

Somehow or other, I am not afraid of the United States' being destroyed by sputniks, by long-range missiles or hydrogen bombs.

Very few nations have been destroyed by invasion at the hands of foreign forces.

Most great nations and most great peoples who have been destroyed, have been destroyed from within.

Most nations in all of history that have risen to great heights and then fell from these heights have decayed and deteriorated from within.

Most nations that have fallen from lofty perches have done so because their people lost their moral fiber and lost their own ability to govern themselves and to perpetuate themselves.

My fear is that this nation will be destroyed by the strange and foreign ideologies which have crept into almost all of our nation-wide organizations, as well as the national government itself.

I fear the strange ideology preached by the modern-day socialists, the modern-day Communists. I fear the strange ideology preached by the Communists.

liberals, the modern-day crackpots and the modern-day pinks and punks.

I fear the doctrine preached by the race mixers.

The doctrine preached by all of these groups is one of deterioration and destruction and unless we head off these ideologies among our own people, then we can expect this nation to disintegrate to the point to where we will destroy ourselves.

It is these strange doctrines we should fear and not the sputniks and not the missiles and not the hydrogen bombs.

Yet, these termites are trying to sell the strange doctrine that to keep from being destroyed by sputniks, long-range missiles and hydrogen bombs that we must adopt their philosophy and ideology.

Queen Elizabeth of England, in her television broadcast to the people of the British Commonwealth on Christmas day, summed the situation up aptly.

She said:

"It's not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery.

"They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.

"At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth."

These fanatics, these crackpots and these Communists and pinks and punks are urging us to "throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery".

And, according to Britain's Queen, it is not the new inventions, it is not the sputniks, it is not the missiles, it is not the hydrogen bombs that we should fear.

We certainly agree with her when she says that these crackpots "would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint."

And in the words of England's Queen, we will disintegrate "if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country . . ."

The men and women "who built the greatness of this country" believed in religion and in morality in personal and public life and in honesty and self-restraint.

The men and women who built the greatness of this country believed that segregation of the white and Negro races was a Christian way of life, that it was legal and constitutional and they practiced what they believed.

A shoe wears out and we throw it away. A piece of machinery finally wears out and it must be discarded.

But fundamental principles never change and the fundamental principles upon which this government and this people were founded have never changed.

These "ageless ideals" still stand.

To throw away our "ageless ideals" as if they were old and outworn machinery would mean the destruction of a great people.

The Communists, the Socialists, the liberals and the wild-eyed radicals, the pinks and the punks are relying upon the philosophy of Gunnar Myrdal, who in his book, said that the Constitution of the United States is out-moded.

The fundamental principles written into the American Constitution are the American expression of "ageless ideals" and these ideals should not be carelessly thrown away.

Britain's Queen also said:

"Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest.

"We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we're not afraid of the future."

The people of Little Rock have shown that special kind of courage to which Queen Elizabeth has referred.

They have stood up for what we know is right and for "everything that is true and honest".

They have shown the world that they are not afraid of the future and that they have the courage to fight for the ageless ideals of their forebears who built the greatness of this country and of this Nation.