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<text> <title> (56 Elect) Little Rock:Case No. 3113 </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1956 Election </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> September 30, 1957 ARKANSAS Case No. 3113 </hdr> <body> With Deliberate Speed "The way they are treating my people down South, the Government can go to hell," trumpeted Jazzman Louis Armstrong, and announced that he was withdrawing from a U.S.-financed trip to the Soviet Union. Nightclub Songstress Eartha Kitt was of like mind. "The country is angry, and it will take a long time to settle down," she cried. "You can't have a strong country with a nitwit like that for President." And Harry S. Truman of Independence, Mo. told friends: "If this had happened when I was in the White House, I would have had Faubus in Washington in 24 hours." Added his wife: "He would, too. It might not have been the right thing to do, but he would have done something." Bess Truman expressed a popular sentiment: in frustration at the continued defiance of the U.S. Government by Arkansas' Democratic Governor Orval Eugene Faubus, the cry echoed across the land for the Eisenhower Administration to "do something." But the emotional swelling ignored a central point: the Administration was indeed doing something--as it should be done. It was keeping the issue of Little Rock integration off the political stump and in the courts of the U.S. There last week Orval Faubus lost the showdown. Policy Is Policy. Implementing its 1954 school-desegregation decision, the U.S. Supreme Court called for "all deliberate speed" in integration, and it named the judges of the federal district courts as its agents for seeing that the order was carried out. It was in that capacity that North Dakota's Judge Ronald Davies sat last week in Little Rock. It was in line with the policy set forth by the Supreme Court that the Administration fought its battle in the courtroom, and not with such grandstand stunts as having President Eisenhower fly to Little Rock and lead Negro children by the hand through the National Guard lines (a notion suggested by Democratic Senators Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas). A top Justice Department official explained the reasoning behind the Administration's policy. "From my experience in the law," said he, "it is well worth taking some time to prove you are legally right before going ahead. If we take a little time to do it right now, we will save years in the long run in carrying out the Supreme Court mandate. Little Rock isn't our only problem in desegregation. We are involved in this thing all over the South. If we rush this thing, people will think we cannot prove our case. They will think we are unfair. That would make it easier for the next fellow to defy the law." Law Is Law. "The posture of the law on any given day may be bad," said another Justice official. "But law is law. Faubus had a right to have those National Guard troops around the school until a court ruled otherwise. You can't go into a community where everybody is against you and force integration because you want it. But if law and order are on your side, the community will end up on your side. There is a native tendency among Americans to be law-abiding." The process of justice was allowed to take its orderly course, and it ended with Orval Faubus withdrawing his militiamen from Little Rock's Central High School. That done, the President of the U.S. could throw the power of moral suasion into achieving peaceful integration in Little Rock. "I am confident," said President Eisenhower, "that they [the people of Little Rock] will vigorously oppose any violence by extremists...I am confident that the citizens of the city of Little Rock and the State of Arkansas will welcome this opportunity to demonstrate that in their city and in their state, proper orders of a U.S. court will be executed promptly and without disorder." Case No. 3113 Federal Judge Ronald Davies glanced at his case file, routinely called up the next item of business: "Civil Case No. 3113 On A Motion For Preliminary Injunction." But Case 3113 was far from routine; it brought to a historic showdown the issue between the U.S. and Arkansas' Democratic Governor Orval Faubus, who had defied the law of the land in calling out his National Guard to prevent school integration. Orval Faubus, who had been dignified the previous weekend by a conference with the President of the U.S., returned from Newport all full of himself, soon gave up any pretense of living up to his implied agreement to start withdrawing National Guard troops from Little Rock's Central High School. He desperately tried to whip up backers for his claim that Little Rock had been about to erupt into violence at the start of integrated classes. Example: he called in a Little Rock city official, displayed a schoolbook with a square section of pages cut out ("Just right for hiding a gun"), and a few water pistols ("The Negroes were gonna fill them with acid and shoot at the white kids"). The city official, far more impressed by Faubus' political power than by the "evidence," signed a statement supporting Faubus. Undeserving Battleground. Throughout the week Arkansas' Democratic Congressman Brooks Hays, who had engineered the Newport meeting with President Eisenhower in all good faith, worked tirelessly on Faubus. Said Mrs. Hays: "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and find Brooks wide awake, thinking things out." Said Hays: "I felt like the sparrow that flew into the badminton game." Hays spent two hours with Faubus on Monday, four more on Tuesday, three on Wednesday and one on Thursday. Orval Faubus seemed to find the Hays efforts simply hilarious; time after time his raucous laughter boomed out of the second-floor study where he was conferring with Hays. For his own part, Brooks Hays could not see the humor of the situation. Said he: "Arkansas does not deserve to be this battleground--no, we surely don't. This should have been fought in a state where there was genuine feeling on the subject of race." That was the whole point. To set himself up as a segregationist hero, Orval Faubus had chosen to manufacture violence in Little Rock and make a dramatic issue of integration in a city long untroubled by major racial difficulties. His refusal to back down put the matter squarely up to Judge Davies (see box) and the U.S. district court where Faubus had been summoned to show cause why a temporary injunction should not be issued against him. Unalterable Stand. The smallish courtroom on the west end of Little Rock's granite Federal Court Building was crowded to capacity (about 130)--but Orval Faubus was conspicuously absent. He satisfied the requirements of the summons by sending three lawyers, including Democratic State Committee Chairman Tom Harper. Judge Davies entered the courtroom at 10 a.m., climbed the dais and engulfed himself in a padded chair several sizes too large. Immediately before him was a group of delaying motions filed by the Faubus legal battery: that Judge Davies disqualify himself on the ground of personal bias, that service of subpoenas against National Guard officers be dismissed because it should be heard by a three-judge court, etc. The Faubus attorneys seemed hardly to care what happened to the motions. Within minutes after young, nervous Faubus Lawyer Kay Matthews began a rambling argument for the disqualification motion, Little Rock School Superintendent Virgil Blossom became the first--but by no means the last--spectator to fall sound asleep. Again, while addressing himself to another motion, Faubus Lawyer Walter Pope said his whole argument was in his brief, and someone had once told him that judges could read. Smiled Ronald Davies: "Yes, I am one of the judges who can read." Moments later the Faubus-inspired motions were quietly and firmly overruled. That was enough for the Faubus lawyers. Chief Counsel Tom Harper, smiling and benign, stepped to the bar and began reading from scribbled notes: "The position of the respondent, Governor Faubus and his military officers, must be firm, unequivocal, unalterable: that the governor of the State of Arkansas cannot and will not concede that the U.S. in this court or anywhere else can question his discretion and judgment..." Harper left one door open for retreat: "This is not to say that the respondents will not comply until they can be set aside, with orders, even though they may be made here." Then, with old-fashioned courtroom courtesy, Harper asked if the Faubus lawyers might be excused from the hearings. Just as politely Judge Davies granted the request. The lawyers walked out. "He Had No Evidence." By leaving the rest of the hearing uncontested, the Faubus lawyers foreclosed themselves from hope of successful appeal from the facts and the evidence presented after the walkout. As for the U.S., which had nearly 200 witnesses on call, the case was simplified by the Faubus default. Result: only eight witnesses were called. They included Little Rock's Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann, School Superintendent Blossom and Police Chief Marvin Potts. All testified that they had neither heard nor seen any signs of violence before the opening of integrated schools in Little Rock. Between them, they could think of only one exception to a remarkable two-decade record of racial peace in their city. The exception: asked if he could recall any violent incidents during his 22 years on the police force, Chief Potts replied: "Just the usual thing. They'd get into rock fights once in a while after school hours." Remarked a spectator: "Imagine if they had asked the chief of police of Chicago if he could remember any incidents of racial violence over 22 years!" "Thwarted by the Governor." Later, as the afternoon wore out in Little Rock, Judge Davies was ready with his decision. There had, in fact, been no issue before his court. All the evidence, as the judge put it, showed that school integration in Little Rock has been "thwarted by the governor of Arkansas by the use of National Guard troops. It is equally demonstrable from the testimony here today that there would have been no violence in carrying out the plan of integration." The preliminary injunction was therefore issued, ordering Faubus and his National Guard officers not to interfere with integration. Snapped Judge Ronald Davies: "Stand in recess," and left the bench. Governor Faubus, chief target of the injunction, had received word of his lawyers' walkout while lolling relaxed in a window seat at his executive mansion. Ever since calling out the National Guard he had warded off questions about his "evidence" of violence by promising to produce it in court. Yet his day in court had come, and neither the evidence nor Orval Faubus was there. (Arriving at the Southern Governors' Conference in Sea Island, Georgia, Faubus explained to newsmen that he had first called out the guard because 1) integrationists had planned to make a big showcase out of integration in Little Rock, and 2) segregationists, catching wind of the plan, had threatened violence to stop it.) Upon hearing that he was no longer even represented (because he had wanted it so), Faubus called for pencil and paper, scratched out an extraordinary statement: "Now begins the crucifixion. There will be no cross-examination, no evidence presented for the other [Faubus] side. So now, by the use of carefully selected witnesses, the Justice Department's case can be continued. The results are a foregone conclusion." That night, after the injunction had been issued, Faubus appeared on three Little Rock television stations. Inveighing against the "unwarranted action" of Judge Davies, Faubus denounced all his critics. (Including TIME, for its "colored, slanted and falsified reports.") But he would nonetheless comply with the court order until its "certain reversal on appeal." Said Governor Orval Faubus: "I have issued orders that all units of the Arkansas National Guard stationed at the high schools in Little Rock be removed there as soon as this can be accomplished. They are now gone or are moving from the school grounds." So they were. The last dozen or so of the 250 National Guardsmen who had moved in on Central High School and the executive mansion two weeks before pulled out quietly as Orval Faubus was speaking. That left the city of Little Rock free to go on about its business--if Orval Faubus, by manufacturing the myth of violence had not in fact whipped up the reality. <list> <l>VISITING JUDGE IN LITTLE ROCK</l> <l>"I'm Just One of a Couple of Hundred"</l> </list> "I, Ronald Norwood Davies, do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me as U.S. judge for the district of North Dakota according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God." Brisk, somber-eyed little (5 ft. 1 in., 140 lbs.) Ronald Davies, North Dakota lawyer, took his oath as a U.S. District Judge in Fargo on Aug. 16, 1955, then turned to well-wishers with one of the shortest induction speeches on record: "I hope that I will have the courage to meet and discharge the responsibilities of my office." Last week, plucked 870 miles from Fargo and set down in Little Rock by the impersonal workings of justice, Ronald Davies fulfilled his hopes. Born 52 years ago in Crookston, Minn., Ronald Davies was one of the four children (a brother died of high-school football injuries) of Country Editor Norwood S. Davies and Minnie M. Quigley Davies, still sprightly at 77 ("She'd play bridge three nights a week yet," says Judge Davies, "and all night if you'd stay with her"). Ronald delivered 125 copies of the daily Crookston Times for $1.50 a week, had his knuckles regularly rapped with a ruler in parochial school by a Sister Milburga. "God love her, she's gone," says Judge Davies. "I remember her very well. Instead of holding your palm up, you'd hold it down and you'd get it across the knuckles. I want you to know that hurt. It was something less than pleasant." Davies' grandfather, chief of police in East Grand Forks, across the North Dakota line from Crookston, often let Ronald tag along into court. Says Judge Davies: "I was absolutely fascinated watching that municipal judge and listening to those lawyers. From then on, that's all I ever wanted to be." Chinaman's Chance The Davies family moved to North Dakota in 1917, settled in Grand Forks, where Ronald became a high-school scatback (I didn't do too well through the line. They had to shake me loose"). He worked his way through the University of North Dakota (as a soda jerk and clothing-store clerk), ran the 100-yd. dash on the track team. "I was getting awfully tired of running second all the time," he recalls. "Alongside the university there's some railroad spurs. I got the idea that running through the spurs in the snow I'd have to lift my legs, I'd have to get strength, I'd have to get stamina. Any Chinaman can see that." Result: a ten-flat 100 and a university record that managed to stand for five years. Davies worked his way through law school at Washington's Georgetown University, the first year by working the graveyard shift as a cop on the U.S. Capitol police force. Says he: "The chief had a motley aggregation. One fellow had one leg and I was only five foot one. The chief didn't like that very well. I had a perfect record though--didn't make an arrest." Lawyer's Choice Back in Grand Forks with $2.50 in his pocket, Davies opened a law office "about the size of a lavatory." He won his first case, a suit for payment on a promissory note. Says he: "It wasn't a very difficult case. The man owed the money." In 1932 Davies was elected municipal judge (at $135 a month) in Grand Forks; he served two terms and retired in 1940 because "I didn't want to get tagged with the title of police-court judge." He entered the Army as a lieutenant in 1942, held down various Stateside desk jobs for four years, emerged as a lieutenant colonel ("That shows the Army wasn't very fussy about the way it promoted people"). Returning to North Dakota, he built a prosperous general practice, worked hard for every civic drive and organization in sight (Elks, Knights of Columbus, American Legion, Forty and Eight, Exchange Club), and won statewide respect as executive director of the North Dakota Bar Association. In 1955, after a poll of members listed Ronald Davies as top choice of the state bar association, President Eisenhower appointed him to the federal bench, where he quickly won a reputation as a no-nonsense judge who could cut incisively through legal complexities. ("There's no one I'd rather have with me on a camping trip," says a friend, "but I'd take any other judge in the state if I were in court and guilty.") Then on Aug. 22, 1957, the Fargo Forum carried a brief notice tucked away on an inside page: "U.S. District Judge Ronald N. Davies of Fargo will leave Saturday for Little Rock, Ark. to preside at a term of the Eastern District of the U.S. Court of Arkansas. He will replace the presiding judge, who is ill." On His Knees No sooner had Ronald Davies arrived in Little Rock than he was deep in the historic integration case brought on by Governor Orval Faubus' defiance of the U.S. Government. Davies fully understood the delicacy of his situation: he kept to himself, left his Sam Peck Hotel room only to walk to the Federal Court Building across the street. Away from his friends and his family (he has two sons, three daughters), friendly, family-minded Ronald Davies began to understand for the first time what New York's famed Judge Harold Medina once said to him: a judge is alone no matter how many people he may have around him. During a ten-day recess in the Little Rock court proceedings, Ronald Davies hurried home to attend a daughter's wedding. ("I got there by the skin of my teeth, thank God"). His wife Mildred, who had been keeping "the radio blaring so I'll know whether they've lynched him," noticed that he had lost weight, that his collars were loose around his throat. She noticed something else: when Roman Catholic Ronald Davies knelt for prayer at his bedside, as he has done every night of his life, he remained on his knees longer than usual. But when his brief breathing spell ended and he returned to Little Rock, Davies betrayed no personal feeling. One night last week, his day's work ended, he sat shirtsleeved in his Federal Court Building chambers and spoke quietly of his role. "I have no delusions about myself," said Davies. "I'm just one of a couple of hundred federal judges all over the country. That's all." True enough. But it was Ronald Davies, the little judge from Fargo, who was in Little Rock representing the other men of the robe--and the law of the land. </body> </article> </text>