Apart from his age—he was sixty-four in the autumn of 1962—Ross Barnett was more like Meredith, whom he was about to engage in a duel by proxy, than he would have acknowledged. Like him he had been one of ten children, and had come to manhood in the hardscrabble clay wasteland of central Mississippi, the barren soil familiar to explorers of Yoknapatawpha County, the creation of William Faulkner, whose nephew Murry Falkner would play a key role in the unfolding crisis just ahead. Like Meredith, Barnett was also a prisoner of the past, a fundamentalist who took the Old Testament to be the literal truth and believed it proscribed racial “mixing.” In another time, under other stars, the two men might have become friends. Barnett would have liked that, for he was naturally warm and gentle, ready to do almost anything for someone in distress, including Negroes. But if the man was black he had to know his place. On the strength of his vow to keep the Merediths of Mississippi where they were, Barnett had been elected governor three years earlier with the endorsement of the state’s White Citizens’ Councils. As an elector in the last presidential election, he had bolted the Kennedy-Johnson ticket to vote for Harry Byrd. He was, in short, representative of his kind and his region: charming, ignorant, friendly, suspicious, blindly loyal to the lost Confederacy, appalled by the present and frightened of the future. Martyrs are made of just such stuff, and only one trait kept Barnett from becoming one. He was a coward. Under great pressure he would look for a way out, a deal. His tragedy, which became Mississippi’s, was that he just didn’t know how to find or make one.
If Barnett resembled Meredith, his antithesis was Robert F. Kennedy, who completely misread him. On the strength of the fact that Mississippi’s highway patrol had effectively convoyed the freedom riders to safety, Bob assumed that the authorities there believed in law and order. He mistook the patrol’s commander, the felicitously but inaccurately named Colonel T. B. Birdsong, for another Floyd Mann. All the situation seemed to need was a plan, and Bob was very good at plans. On Saturday, September 15, he called Barnett and explained crisply how it would all be managed. He understood, of course, that as a southern governor Barnett would have to offer token resistance. Therefore Meredith would be escorted by several marshals brandishing court orders. The governor could throw up his hands and the university officials, bowing to the inevitable, would then enroll Meredith. Kennedy asked if Barnett understood, if there were any questions. In what should have been recognized as a sign of how far apart they were, the governor said, “That will take about a year.”
It took just five days. The following Thursday Meredith, accompanied by the marshals, appeared in Oxford to register. He was met by Barnett, who was attempting to shield the university administration by appearing himself in the role of a “special registrar.” While two thousand white students chanted, “We want Ross, we want Ross,” and “Glory, glory, segregation,” the governor read a decree barring Meredith from the campus “now and forevermore.” Then he handed it to him and said, “Take it and abide by it.” One of the men from the Justice Department said, “Do you realize you are placing yourself in contempt of court?” Barnett said, “Are you telling me this or does it take a judge?”
His legal position, and he thought it unassailable, was what is called interposition—interposing himself, as a representative of the states’ rights, between the administration in Washington and the people of Mississippi. He had asked his legislature to give him that authority, and it had complied. When American historians learned of that, they were incredulous. Interposition had been discredited as a doctrine before the Civil War. In fact, when John C. Calhoun had tried to invoke it in 1832, the Mississippi legislature of that time had rejected it as “a heresy, fatal to the existence of the Union… contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and in direct conflict with the welfare, safety and independence of every state.” Now, one hundred and thirty years later, the governor was trying to breathe life into the same dead dogma. The Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, undeceived and unwilling to recognize Barnett as a special registrar, ordered university officials to appear the following Monday and show cause why they should not be cited for contempt. Barnett protested bitterly to the press at the speed of the courts. Mississippi’s Senator James Eastland phoned Bob Kennedy to say, “The governor thinks you can back down a little, and I think so, too.” Bob replied, “You don’t really believe that, Senator. You’ve been in the Senate too long to believe that.”
In court the university officials promised to admit Meredith by 4 P.M. the next day. Barnett still refused to budge. Saying that he was “shocked” at the officials’ “surrender,” he announced that anyone from the Department of Justice who interfered with Mississippians doing their duty would be arrested and jailed. Kennedy phoned him to point out that the people of Mississippi, including their governor, were citizens of the United States of America and subject to its laws. Barnett said, “I consider the Mississippi courts as high as any other court and a lot more capable…. Our courts have acted too, and our legislature has acted too. I’m going to obey the laws of Mississippi!” His attorney general, Joe Patterson, then issued a statement saying that freedom had been dealt “a staggering blow…. The constitutional rights of over 5,000 students have been ignored to gratify the pretended constitutional rights of one.”
Meredith made his second attempt to register the next day in Jackson, at the office of the university trustees. John Doar and Jim McShane were with him. They were met by Barnett, Colonel Birdsong, and a jeering crowd of onlookers. The university officials couldn’t keep the commitment made yesterday in New Orleans, the governor said, because they had been subpoenaed by a legislative committee investigating un-Mississippian activities. Doar tried to serve court papers on the governor; Barnett put his hands in his pockets. Doar asked, “Do you refuse to let us through that door?” Courtly as always, the governor said, “Yes, sir, I do so politely.” Doar said, “And we leave politely.” The crowd was not polite. As Meredith and his escort departed there were cries of “Go home, nigger,” and “Communists!”
Bob Kennedy had been trying to keep Barnett’s name out of the court proceedings because he remembered how Faubus had made political capital in Little Rock, but this was too much. The successive failures to admit Meredith were conveying the impression, in Mississippi at least, that the white supremacists were winning. Kennedy decided to ask for a Fifth Circuit order showing the governor in contempt. He phoned Barnett to tell him he was going to do it. He said further that Meredith would appear in Oxford in the morning, ready to attend classes. Barnett was aggrieved. Didn’t that boy know when he wasn’t wanted? As governor he had other duties, he said; he couldn’t keep “running all over the State of Mississippi” for one Mississippian, and a Negro at that. Kennedy thought Meredith’s enrollment would work. He said, “Why don’t you try it for six months and see how it goes?”
“It’s best for him not to go to Ole Miss,” Barnett said.
Bob replied softly, “But he likes Ole Miss.”
On campus alarmed faculty members noted a growing swell of visitors from all over Dixie, hard-bitten men with brush-fire eyes who were often armed and who asked, “Where will the nigger come from?” Their leader was General Edwin A. Walker, now of Dallas. On Wednesday, September 26, the day before the confrontation in Jackson, the general had issued a somewhat incoherent radio appeal to those who shared his convictions: “It is time to move. We have talked, listened, and been pushed around far too much by the anti-Christ Supreme Court. Rise to a stand beside Governor Barnett at Jackson, Mississippi. Now is the time to be heard. Ten thousand strong from every state in the union. The battle cry of the republic. Barnett, yes; Castro, no. Bring your flags, your tents, and your skillets…. The last time in such a situation I was on the wrong side…. This time I am out of uniform and I am on the right side and I will be there.”
That day Barnett went into temporary seclusion. When Meredith and his escorts approached the campus in Oxford they were turned back by Lieutenant Governor Paul
Johnson, backed by detachments of state troopers and county sheriffs. This time there was some jostling as the federal men tried to walk around Johnson in the hope that, having resisted, he would bow to the inevitable. He didn’t bow. It was clear that force would be required to get past him. The marshals had been told to stop short of that, and there weren’t enough of them anyway. Meredith was turned back again.
***
By this point every civil rights leader in America and most of official Washington thought that the Justice Department was being too patient, that the dignity of the federal government was in jeopardy. Robert Kennedy knew it, but he had sensed fear in Ross Barnett. The governor, he thought, would welcome an opportunity to save face; he seemed to be learning the peril of continuing to defy a federal court. On the phone the next morning, Thursday, Bob suggested that they explore the possibility of finding a way out. He had been right; the governor instantly agreed. If he had been as able a politician as George Wallace, the crisis might have been resolved then. But he wasn’t able. His sense of timing (or Bob’s timing in waiting this long to close with him) was wrong; too many hopes of total victory had been raised in diehard segregationists, emotions were running too high, too many Mississippians were calling for resistance “regardless of the cost in human life”—a phrase heard everywhere there. Most important, the governor didn’t know how to strike a bargain. He knew he would have to sacrifice something to make peace, but he couldn’t decide how much he would give up, how much resistance he could show for the sake of appearances and still remain below the flash point of violence.
Their first attempt to reach an understanding ended in ludicrous failure. They talked of Barnett and Lieutenant Governor Johnson at the campus gate, flanked by unarmed state troopers, facing McShane and thirty marshals. McShane would draw an unloaded pistol. The Mississippians would then step aside, and Meredith would pass through the gate and be registered. Barnett said one revolver wasn’t enough. He wanted all thirty marshals to draw; that way, he could say he yielded to avoid bloodshed. Bobby proposed that the other marshals just slap their holsters. That wasn’t sufficiently realistic for the governor, and so it was settled that all thirty guns would be drawn.
Earlier in the week this might have been enough, but now it would be dangerous. The fact that the troopers were unarmed was irrelevant; they would be counterbalanced by the guns carried by General Walker’s followers in Oxford. In addition, Barnett was the only man on his side who knew of the deal. He might be the only one to step aside. The realization of this came to him while he was waiting for Meredith at the campus gate. The black Air Force veteran was then proceeding toward him in a thirteen-car convoy which was in radio contact with Washington. At 3:35 P.M. Mississippi time, 5:35 in Washington, Barnett called Kennedy to say that he couldn’t control the crowd, it was too big and in too ugly a temper. That ended the showdown scenario. The convoy turned back. Meredith had been denied registration four times now, and that evening at the university white students held a wild demonstration.
But there would be no more failures. Bob Kennedy was conferring with General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and his principal commanders, General Earle G. Wheeler and Major General Creighton W. Abrams. At the Justice Department an assistant attorney general was drafting documents for President Kennedy’s signature putting Mississippi’s National Guard in federal service, alerting U.S. infantry units at Fort Benning for action, and warning civilians in the streets of Oxford to go home and stay there. Another assistant attorney general was flying down to assume command of a growing force of marshals. From New Orleans came word that the Fifth Circuit had found Barnett guilty of contempt, ruling that if Meredith were not registered by Tuesday—it was now Friday—the governor would be fined $10,000 a day; for Lieutenant Governor Johnson, if Johnson took his place, it would be $5,000 a day.
The only card the government hadn’t played was presidential prestige, and that was committed Saturday afternoon when the White House put through a call to the statehouse in Jackson. President Kennedy had already requested television time at 8 P.M. to lay the matter before the American people. He canceled it when Barnett proposed that Meredith be admitted secretly in Jackson on Monday while the governor was diverting the mob in Oxford. His manner didn’t inspire confidence, however; hanging up, the President turned to the others and asked in wonder, “Do you know what that fellow said? He said, ‘I want to thank you for your help on the poultry program.’”
At ten o’clock that evening the lack of confidence was justified. Barnett phoned the Justice Department to say that he had changed his mind. The agreement was off; he wouldn’t go through with his part of it. Again the President requested television time, for 7:30 the following evening, Sunday, September 30. Sunday morning the governor called Robert Kennedy. It was another fruitless, frustrating conversation, and in the middle of it Bob lost his temper. He said his brother was going on TV to tell the country how Barnett had reached an agreement “with the President of the United States” and had then broken his word.
Alarmed, the governor said in a high-pitched voice, “That won’t do at all.”
“You broke your word to him.”
“You don’t mean the President is going to say that tonight?”
“He is.”
Barnett, breathing hard, suggested flying Meredith in “this afternoon.”
That seemed to be the end of it. Meredith, it appeared, would be enrolled that same day, and without bloodshed. He would be admitted quietly while state troopers kept the peace. Afterward Barnett would issue a furious statement saying that it had been done behind his back, that he was yielding to irresistible force but would fight it in the courts. Deputy Attorney General Nick Katzenbach flew down to supervise the details. At 5 P.M. Mississippi time, accompanied by Colonel Birdsong, he led four hundred marshals onto the Ole Miss campus, now almost deserted, through the little-used west gate. Meredith was taken quietly to Baxter Hall, at one end of the grounds, while Katzenbach and the marshals established a command post at the other end in the lovely old red brick Lyceum Building, the university’s administration building. The President delayed his television address until 10 P.M. in the belief that the crisis would be all over by then. But this Sunday, like every other day in the Meredith case, seemed jinxed. Almost at once communications with Washington broke down, and they remained out until Monday morning. Even after Army units arrived on the scene, the Signal Corps was unable to establish a link to the White House. Throughout this, the height of the crisis, with the eyes of the nation and much of the world on Ole Miss, the President of the United States and the attorney general, his brother, received crucial reports from Katzenbach, who was dropping dimes into a pay phone in a campus booth.
As the sun sank over Mississippi it became evident that somehow word of what had happened was spreading in Oxford. A crowd of about a thousand quickly gathered outside the Lyceum. Meredith’s whereabouts were unknown to them; throughout the coming nightmare he remained concealed a mile away, guarded by twenty-four marshals who had doffed their white helmets and orange vests so that they, too, would be inconspicuous. There can be little doubt about what would have happened to him, and possibly to them, if his presence in Baxter Hall had become known to the mob. Like Richard Nixon in Caracas, he was in very real danger of being torn apart. The marshals (all of whom were white southerners themselves) were being taunted with “Kill the nigger-loving bastards,” “Go to Cuba, nigger lovers,” and a chant: “Two-four-one-three, we hate Kennedy!” The evening deepened. The crowd doubled, and redoubled. Its shouts became obscene. The marshals were pelted with stones, then rocks, then lighted cigarettes. A Texas newsman and his wife were beaten by men swinging pieces of pipe. Many of the state troopers on the scene were unhelpful. Some stood aside with folded arms and did nothing.
It was 7:30 P.M. in Mississippi when the FBI monitored a radio signal ordering the state troopers to withdraw entirely and leave Meredith and the marshals to the mob. Later efforts to f
ind out who had sent it were unsuccessful. Katzenbach phoned Bob Kennedy to tell him of it. In the background Bob could make out the ragged sounds of riot. Then—it was at 7:58—he heard that thumping sound of gas grenades. Katzenbach said, “Bob, I’m very sorry to report we’ve had to fire tear gas. We had no choice.”
In Washington the President went on television unaware of the latest developments. To the best of his knowledge then, Barnett was keeping his word to maintain order with the troopers. He explained to the national audience that Meredith was on the campus, explained the need to enforce court orders, spoke glowingly of the heroism of Mississippi men in the country’s wars, and appealed to Ole Miss undergraduates: “The honor of your university and state are in the balance. I am certain that the great majority of the students will uphold that honor.”
In Oxford the students watching him jeered. General Walker was moving among them purposefully. A fire engine and a bulldozer were seized by men who used them to try to crash through the line of marshals and into the Lyceum; well-lobbed grenades drove them off. The attackers hurled Molotov cocktails fashioned from Coca-Cola bottles. Campus benches were demolished to make jagged concrete projectiles, iron bars and bricks from construction sites were thrown, and here and there the crack of rifles could be heard as invisible snipers zeroed in on the Lyceum. Two men were killed, a French foreign correspondent and an Oxford spectator. Over a third of the marshals—166—were injured, and 28 were wounded by snipers’ bullets. The marshals carried sidearms; they were under fire; it seemed right to return it. They repeatedly asked for permission to do so, and Katzenbach relayed the requests to Washington. The Kennedy brothers rejected the appeals. There would be no federal use of live ammunition, they ruled, unless Meredith was in danger. The marshals, exhausted and bloodied, held out with only their black, stubby tear gas guns to protect them.3 Edwin Guthman was in the Lyceum, on the phone with Bob Kennedy. Bob asked, “How’s it going down there?” Ed answered, “Pretty rough. It’s sort of like the Alamo.” Bob said, “Well, you remember what happened to those fellows.”
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 Page 142
