The first court-ordered racial integration of public schools in the Deep South began last week in New Orleans, and the deep-seated force of racism squared off against the push of sociological change.
Two men stood at the head of the opposing forces. In the state capital of Baton Rouge, segregationist Governor Jimmie Davis—a smudged, folk-singing carbon of Arkansas' Orval Faubus—guided his legislature through a stormy special session, signing into law a paroxysm of sweeping resolutions aimed at tearing apart the New Orleans school system and whooping up segregationist emotion. In New Orleans' federal...
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