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"If You Want to Be Chicken." Assistant Police Chief Eugene Smith, in charge at the high school, watched the crowd sharply, began to feel a sense of purpose and organization, noted that "half the troublemakers were from out of town." A girl in a yellow skirt talked to a schoolboy, his books in one hand, a gallon jug with two lively brown mice in the other. "If you want to be chicken," said the girl, "go on in." The boy smiled shamefacedly —and went to school. The Central High School class bell rang at 8:45—and at almost that instant a shriek went up: "Here come the niggers!"
Four Negro newsmen had foolishly approached the crowd from the rear. It was the tinder's spark. Some 20 rednecks turned on the Negroes, began chasing them back down the block. Other whites streamed behind. A one-armed man, his dimpled stump below his shirtsleeve, swung wildly at one Negro. Another Negro (a onetime U.S. marine) decided not to run, ambled with terrifying dignity through a gauntlet of blows, kicks and curses. A cop stood on a car bumper to get a better view. Other cops moved toward the fighting. Faubus Henchman James Karam cried angrily, "The nigger started it!" A huge man came up behind Karam and said: "Get five or six boys, and get them over there where the nigger kids came in last time." State Athletic Commissioner Karam led five bullyboys to the other end of the school.
The Negro children had already entered Central High School. While the mob's attention was distracted by the Negro newsmen, the nine students stepped from two cars and walked slowly, calmly into the school. But the mob had nonetheless won the first day's battle of Central High School: it had discovered that it could act violently without suffering at the hands of the cops. From that moment on, the result was inevitable. The mob grew from 300 to 500 to 900; it had tasted blood and liked it. It churned madly around and, in the absence of Negroes to maul, turned on Northern newsmen, beating three LIFE staffers. At noon Little Rock's Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann ordered the Negro children withdrawn from the school.
Far away at sunny Sea Island, having kept in telephone touch, Orval Faubus proclaimed his triumph: "The trouble in Little Rock vindicates my good judgment." But the grin was soon wiped off his face by the dramatic rush of events in Washington and Newport.
"I Will Have to Sign It." President Eisenhower had resisted all public and private cries for drastic action, had worked determinedly to keep Little Rock's trouble where it belonged: in the courtroom instead of the street. But his personal conference with Orval Faubus in Newport (TIME, Sept. 23) heightened his growing suspicion that he might have to move, however reluctantly, into the Little Rock situation. "If I do," he told an associate, "you can bet one thing. It will be quick, hard and decisive." Preparing against the day, Attorney General Herbert Brownell drafted a proclamation ordering compliance with the court's decision and opening the way for the eventual use of U.S. troops in Little Rock.