Abstract
For much of September 1957, the Washington Post, like most of the nation’s media, breathlessly reported on events in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Governor Orval Faubus had ordered the state’s National Guard to bar nine African American students from desegregating Central High School. In justifying his actions, Faubus unabashedly declared that he had called out the guard not in defense of segregation but to “preserve the peace.”¹ Not that the northern press was fooled by these claims. In a scathing editorial entitled “Law and Order” printed on September 4, the Post made clear its stance on Faubus’s actions. “Those who