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    most of those newly-purchased blades were in the pockets of blacks.

    The FBI checked on Faubus' claims.  In 100 stores, the sale of guns and

    knives was actually down.

    But there were weapons being brandished openly in the streets.

    They belonged to the National Guard troops the governor had called in

    to "defend" the citizens of his fair state against the assaults of the

    supposedly well-armed enemy.  When nine black children showed up

    outside Central High  ready to enroll on the first day of school, those

    Guardsmen raised their rifles and turned the kids away.  Again, the

    FBI checked for signs of the budding black insurrection Faubus kept

    implying was about to begin...clues to the existence of the horde who

    threatening to slit the throats of innumerable innocent whites.  This

    time, the authorities in Washington issued a 500-page report.  They

    couldn't find a shred of evidence to prove Faubus right.

    The Federal gumshoes should have checked the home of Orval

    Faubus' close friend Jimmy "The Flash" Karam.  Karam was Arkansas'

    State Athletic Commissioner, a man who could whip together a squad

    of oversized brutes on a minute's notice.  One day in mid-September,

    Faubus slipped away to a Southern Governor's Conference in Sea

    Island, Georgia, leaving The Flash to carry out a delicate mission.

    Early in the pre-dawn hours outside of Central High, Karam

    positioned a squad of thugs recruited from local sports teams.  When

    the first class bell rang at 8:45 A.M., four African-American reporters

    showed up to cover the black students' attempts to approach their

    school.  One of the Karam's heavies let out a cry: "Here come the

    niggers."  The black journalists beat a hasty retreat, but not hasty

    enough.  Twenty of the whites planted by "The Flash" cornered the

    reporters and started punching--hard.  As the police moved in, Karam

    roared, "The niggers started it!"  Radio newscasts reported the melee,

    and soon, the dregs of white Little Rock, spoiling to defend Caucasian

    honor, began to pour in.  Hundreds of them.  When they couldn't find

    enough blacks to beat, they turned on northerners.  They pounded the

    bejesus out of three reporters from Life Magazine.  The violence that

    Orval Faubus had predicted for Little Rock had arrived.

      ong.  Little Rock's stores, he said, were running out of knives.  And

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