Blue Law
(2024) 5x7, Pigment Ink Print

9/15/57 Helen & kids we’re O.K. – It is 95 here. Blue Law here nothing open. Tell Joan & Larry hello. yours Mattie..

Written by: Mattie Sent to: Mr. Bill Ahem, Indianapolis, Ind Postmarked: Little Rock, ARK. SEP 15, 1957 Front of Card: The State Capitol : Little Rock Type of Card: Kodachrome Photograph

This card was written by a first hand witness of the Little Rock Central High School Desegregation Crisis. The card was postmarked on the day; Governor Orval Faubus sits down for an interview with Mike Wallace in the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas. The card was written a day after Faubus conference with President Eisenhower in Rhode Island. From the interview: Governor Faubus: "The Guard was not called out to prevent integration, but to keep the peace and order of the community… In fact, in a poll of the Little Rock area, eighty-two percent of the people agreed that disorder and violence would have occurred, had not I taken the action which I did.” Mike Wallace: "You and I, all of us, have seen photographs, Governor, of Negro children been turned away from Little Rock High school, and behind them white people jeering and cursing at them. Let me read to you what communist propaganda is to make of this; several days ago, Radio Moscow said this, "The shameful spectacle of Negro children confronted by guns and ugly mobs, as they tried to enter schools, which racist elements are determined shall remain all white." Does it not give you pause to know that communist propagandists leap upon your actions to try to discredit the United States in the eyes of the world? In the eyes of the world which is composed of a majority of colored peoples?"