ABSTRACT
By labor day 1957, when Gov. Orval Faubus suddenly deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the invasion of Little Rock's Central High School by nine black children, the author had spent 20 years tracking the historical forces that shaped the constitutional crisis he confronted as executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette. His campaigns have established him as neither a Yankee-lover nor a deep-dyed Southerner. The dominant fact of Southern life was the existence of a social order openly based on the doctrine of white supremacy. The Democratic National Convention nominated Truman after a young Minnesota delegate named Hubert Humphrey declared on the floor, "The time has come for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights." The package of civil rights legislation that touched off the rebellion got nowhere when Truman sent it to Congress.
