OF THE EVENTS THAT OCCURRED in late September and early October 1957, after deployment of federal troops to desegregate Little Rock's Central High, none were as perplexing as Gov. Faubus's declarations that white schoolgirls were under attack, physically and psychologically. Riding wave of popularity set off by his use of National Guard to stop integration, Faubus took lead in opposing federal occupation of Little Rock. He spoke in a language that his chief constituency, Little Rock's working-class segregationists, well understood-a racialized language with powerful sexual overtones. Faubus, who would be elected governor of Arkansas six times, was clearly not without political acumen. When Faubus, claiming violence was imminent, surrounded Central High with National Guard, he ensured his support from increasingly vocal and organized white supremacist minority. Previously reluctant to take a position with regard to integration, Faubus finally transformed himself in eyes of segregationists from a southern moderate- Awful Faubus-to a segregationist hero- Orval Fabulous.1 Yet it was not until President Dwight Elsenhower's deployment of federal troops to Little Rock that Faubus was assured ample potent material to maintain his popularity. The presence of federal troops in Little Rock became a symbolic re-enactment of Civil War, leaving little room for whites to hold moderate positions.2 At that point, Faubus could shift public's focus from his questionable claims about violence squarely onto actions of federal government. Instrumental to this shift in focus were three incidents in which Faubus framed himself as protector of white schoolgirls and, more specifically, of white female sexuality. In these incidents, Faubus spoke not of threat posed by black male students integrating Central as much as by federal troops. He cast federal soldiers and FBI in role of sexualized male predator. Yet, as Faubus must have recognized, each incident he brought to attention of press spoke more generally to white supremacist scripts about supposed sexual dangers of integration.3 The segregationist message touted since Reconstruction and certainly since proposal in 1956 to integrate Central High was that white females were endangered by presence of black males in particular and blackness in general. The presence of federal troops on Arkansas soil certainly carried its own historically potent message that southern statehood had been violated. The specifically sexual connotations in Faubus's claims, however, can be linked to a historically rooted and sexually potent image of great currency at time-that of miscegenation.4 By linking mythic threats of black male and Yankee invader, Faubus combined two familiar themes into one potent message-that Little Rock's white schoolgirls were essentially in danger of being sexually violated.5 Faubus clearly seems to have been attuned to many white parents' understanding of integration as violation. On Monday, September 23, 1957, first school day after Governor Faubus was ordered to remove National Guard, nine black students finally entered previously all-white Central High. In response to their entrance, almost as if on cue, mothers in crowd that had gathered outside became hysterical, shouting the niggers are in school! and the niggers are in school.6 Like one-drop rule that defined racial status, even one or two or nine black students could, through penetrating a school of over 2,000 whites, transform its color, its identity, and, more importantly, its value.7 Central High was no longer white, hence it could no longer be claimed by white crowd as our school, a status that for Little Rock's working-class whites had been, up until this point, guaranteed by segregation.8 Vehemently instrumental in leading mob by her emotional responses to integration was Mrs. …