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COOPER V. AARON

Butler: Well, this school board in Little Rock, Arkansas, was not faced with theories, it was faced with actualities which are undermining and which are going to destroy the public school system in Little Rock, and when it's destroyed, it'll be destroyed not just for white students, it'll be destroyed all the way up and down the line, unless they're given an opportunity to work this thing out in a climate of calm rather than in a climate of hysteria.

Narrator: Chief Justice Warren did not want mobs to decide legal questions.

Warren: Mr. Butler, I think there's no member of this Court who fails to recognize the very great problem which your school board has. But, can we defer a program of this kind, merely because there are those elements in the community that will commit violence to prevent it from going into effect?

Butler: Mr. Chief Justice, I think so, but not directed to the people who form mobs, not directed to the people who are law defiers -- we're not standing up here taking, trying to argue for their side . . . (Warren: I know you're not) We are arguing for the great mass of people throughout the South, who I say again, and will say again and again, are not law defiers; they want to follow the law, but they -- as of this moment -- without certain state statutes having been tested in court, do not know just exactly what the law is in a particular give circumstance.

Narrator: Butler's final argument provoked a heated reply from Warren.

Butler: The point I'm making is this: that if the governor of any state says that a United States Supreme Court decision is not the law of the land, the people of that state, until it is really resolved, have a doubt in their mind and a right to have a doubt.

Warren: I have never heard such an argument made in a court of justice before, and I've tried many a case, over many a year. I never heard a lawyer say that the statement of a governor, as to what was legal or illegal, should control the action of any court.

Narrator: Thurgood Marshall speaks for Little Rock's black children. Marshall headed the NAACP legal staff for many years. He argued and won many civil rights cases before the Court, including Brown. He denounces Butler's appeal for delay.

Marshall: The truth of the matter is, these entire proceedings, starting with the filing of the petition of the school board way back in February, asking for time,