ARKANSAS: Dynamite & the Cop

In the month since rugged, tough Police Chief Eugene Smith stopped them cold in their attempt to halt integration at Hall and Central high schools, Little Rock’s dwindling band of diehard segregationists has seethed with frustration. Last week, in a senseless outburst of spite, a handful of maniacs shattered the calm of Labor Day night with a spree of bomb throwing—and again ran smack into hard-hitting Gene Smith, backed by rock-hard Little Rock public opinion.

Using fused sticks of dynamite, the terrorists jolted the city three times within 40 minutes. First target was Fire Chief Gann L. Nalley, who had ordered fire hoses turned on the mob marching on Central High last month; an explosion shattered Nalley’s city-owned red station wagon parked outside his home. A second blast, 33 minutes later and eight miles away, blew in the glass front of an office building housing Little Rock Mayor Werner C. Knoop’s construction firm. Five minutes later dynamite thrown through a ground-floor window partially wrecked the Little Rock school district’s administrative offices, blew out windows in a nearby Carmelite monastery where 14 nuns were asleep.

Within minutes of the first blast, grim-faced Gene Smith was in action, ordering all available police to duty, posting guards at homes of city officials and school board members, enlisting the aid of the Little Rock FBI office in a sleepless, round-the-clock hunt for the dynamiters. In three days he had rounded up five suspects: Building Supply Dealer E. A. Lauderdale Sr., 48, twice-defeated candidate for the City Manager Board and a leader of the segregationist Capital Citizens Council; Truck Driver J. D. Sims, 35, who admitted to an Arkansas Gazette reporter that he had placed three sticks of dynamite under Fire Chief Nalley’s car and thrown ten sticks into the school board’s office; Auto Salesman John Taylor Coggins, 39; Samuel G. Beavers, 49, a carpenter at the state mental hospital; and Truck Driver Jesse R. Perry, 24. Convinced of his case against all five, Gene Smith saw each arraigned on $50,000 bail, announced that a fourth dynamite attempt (against an office building occupied by the Prudential Insurance Co.) had fizzled when the dynamiters were scared away by heavy downtown traffic.

Answering a Chamber of Commerce appeal for a reward fund, hundreds sent in donations in quarters, half dollars, bills and personal checks, totaling within a few days more than $20,000. The usually pro-segregationist Arkansas Democrat praised the outpouring, boasted: “That was the true Little Rock, rising out of a mist of half-lights and distortions emanating from our high school troubles to assert the principles that are the inheritance and pride of our people.” In the cold loneliness of a man without a cause, even Governor Orval Faubus was moved to call the bombings “sickening and deplorable.”