Story-Telling Statesmen from Arkansas - Page 5

Article that reviews Brooks Hays' career in The Linkhistory. Hays felt a moral obligation ... to serve as peacemaker . . . even though it meant political suicide." For weeks the Congressman served as mediator between the President and the Governor as they traded charges and countercharges. He came within an eyelash of finding an acceptable solution, but Mr. Eisenhower finally believed it necessary to send federal troops to guarantee compliance with the U. S. Supreme Court ruling on integration, "I felt like a sparrow caught in a badminton game," he quipped. Hays, who had easily won the 1958 Democratic primary (normally tantamount to election in Arkansas), suddenly found his seat in Congress challenged by a sudden write-in campaign led by segregationist leaders eight days before the November general election. He did not have time to organize a campaign, and fell a few votes short of victory on election day. Even in defeat, Hays used his sense of humor to philosophize. A newsman interviewing him on CBS "Face the Nation" television, asked why Hays had not advised the nation of the perilous path he was walking in his role as mediator. "It reminds me of the hypochondriac whom nobody believed," Hays said. "He had them write on his tombstone, 'I told you I was sick.'" Hays's friends wondered, during the next few weeks, if his world would ever fit back together again. I had opportunity to call at his office and probe him for his innermost feelings. Was he willing now, I asked to retire from public life and enter, say, the private practice of law? Hays opened a desk drawer and read from his diary the story of his conversation with a Negro college student who worked as a bellhop in the Little Rock hotel where Hays was staying on the day of his election defeat. The lad voluntarily predicted the Congressman's return to Washington and added, "You see, Mr. Hays, I do not agree with Plato that the mechanisms of popular government do not raise the best man to the top." But before Hays could reach into his pocket for a generous tip, the Plato-influenced student continued, "I've been reading your new book too, Mr. Hays, and sometime I want to argue with you about your conclusions." Hays laid the diary aside and looked up at me, then asked: "What about this lad's future? Ten years from now will this man who is able to quote Plato still be carrying bags to hotel rooms? Or can our country open doors of opportunity heretofore closed to the Negro? Only I, one person, was affected when the Little Rock election closed the door to Congress in my face. But what about closed doors for a whole race?" Hays's humor was only partially effective at the United Nations when President Eisenhower named him to the U. S. delegation in 1955. He countered Russia's proposal for admission of Outer Mongolia to the world body by suggesting that the balance of power be maintained by admitting Texas as well, under the name of "Outer Arkansas." But things did not go as well when 2