Sons of Mississippi

by Paul Hendrickson

  Charles Moore is remembering the moment when he found the shot and clicked the shutter. It’s early summer 2000, thirty-eight years from the din. He’s sixty-nine. After decades of wandering, he has moved back to the corner of northwest Alabama where he grew up. He is thin, wiry, white-haired. He’s in a blue shirt with epaulettes. He’s got on New Balance sneakers. He looks pretty much as you might imagine an old photographer and Golden Glove welterweight. He seems modest, retiring, decent, lonely, likable, a bit unfocused and weary—yet oddly vital too. He says he has recently separated from his wife of four years. He says that until today, he’s never known the names of any of the men in the photograph, much less anything of their stories. He just took it and moved on—like any shooter in a war zone.

  He’s down on his living-room rug, and the magazine is open in front of him. Lovely light is coming in. He bought this rug in India in 1965, when he was shooting an overseas assignment, after he was burned out with civil rights photojournalism. So many clicks since a click in the Grove.

  “I focused only on that,” he says. “I just saw this group of men, and I saw this guy holding this bat kind of thing. If you’re any kind of halfway decent photojournalist, you just go toward that. They were huddled. When I saw the stick, that just drew me in. I came up behind the trooper. That wasn’t right. So I came around behind him so I could get them over his shoulder. I wasn’t trying to hide behind him. That didn’t occur to me. It did to some later. I guess I made four or five shots. I knew the instant I’d made it.”

  He once told a reporter about his art: “I project myself into a person. I look at everything, the arms, the hands, the expression. I wait for the moment.… I shoot.”

  “That thing that looks like a shiny coffin lid—it’s a patrol car, right?”

  “Yeah, and it irritates me,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “It’s that thing that’s just going out of the picture.”

  “This man’s name is John Ed. He’s alive. Last one.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He never wanted to show his face.”

  He laughs at that. “Okay, see how he’s holding in the picture here? He’s keeping this white shirt on this other guy from going out of the picture.” He means Jim Garrison. He is surprised to learn Garrison was only twenty-seven. He moves his hand across the right side of the print, from John Ed to Garrison, then across the other faces. “Same on the left side, in terms of the framing and composition. The shape of this trooper is holding in this side. He’s holding in this man’s white shirt. Course, this is the aesthetics of it. You’re looking for something else.”

  “They called him John Henry, that one you’ve got your finger on.”

  “I love the cigar. They used to mash their cigars, guys like that.”

  “How far away were you from his back?”

  “Maybe eight feet, right behind that trooper. Whenever I go in, I preset. I probably set it at eight to ten feet. I had the lens opening at maybe f-8. I’d say ten feet and f-8.”

  “Did they sort of seem like they were out of a movie?”

  “You mean like Humphrey Bogart or something? Yeah, I guess part of it is the way they’re smoking.” He touches Billy. “These could be any thugs anywhere. I’ve known guys like this all my life. Lotta ego this one here, right?”

  “Most died pretty miserable deaths. Cancer. They lingered with it. Billy Ferrell did, although others lingered even longer. Did they scare you that day?”

  “Not especially.” Then slowly: “I think we human beings have to pay a price for the things we do on earth.”

  “Can you remember what time of day you took it?”

  “It just hits me it would be afternoon. Maybe early afternoon, one or two.”

  Hang on to “early afternoon,” early afternoon of Thursday, September 27, 1962—at maybe one or two o’clock. Hang on to this approximate time and date while a documentary, in miniature, unfolds. It’s going to proceed chronologically, from September 20 through September 30, the latter being the night of the riot itself. By far the best account of this chaotic period—almost a minute-by-minute re-creation—remains Walter Lord’s 1965 book, The Past That Would Not Die. In Lord’s novelistic and yet very factual story, the Life photograph didn’t rate a mention, nor should it have, really: As I’ve said, Billy and Ira and John Henry and Bob and the two Jims and John Ed—along with almost everybody else involved, up to and including the enrollee himself—were peons in the larger frame, the larger expediency.

  A ten-day box of famous Mississippi time:

  On Thursday the twentieth, in Jackson (Charles Moore hadn’t arrived in the state yet), the board of trustees of the university convened for its regular monthly meeting and voted to appoint the governor the emergency registrar of the university. The state legislature had already passed special Senate Bill 1501, making Meredith ineligible for entry because of the (trumped-up) criminal charge concerning his driver’s license registration. As the board of trustees met, the governor himself was speeding to Oxford, three hours northward by car. As an extra measure, the newly appointed registrar was armed with an injunction from some local flunky justice of the peace prohibiting Meredith’s enrollment. Throughout the day, Bobby Kennedy and Barnett’s surrogates had been on the phone. RFK was pressing the governor for assurance that Meredith would be protected from violence and that he wouldn’t be arrested at the last minute by a rogue sheriff or two. At 4:53 P.M., Washington time, the principals spoke. This meant it was 2:53 P.M. in Mississippi, although Kennedy and Barnett could never seem to get the time difference straight. (There was a two-hour time difference in those days.) “Hello, Governor, how are you?” Kennedy said. They discussed the situation as it now stood—which was that Meredith was going to make a try to get in, without being arrested or harmed, and that Barnett would formally and peaceably deny him, and that no one on the outside need know it was just a skit before the real thing. “Thank you, Governor,” Kennedy said, ringing off. “Nice to talk to you,” to which Barnett said, “Thank you, General.”

  At about 4:30 in Mississippi, Chief U.S. Marshal James McShane and John Doar (of the civil rights division of the Justice Department, working under Burke Marshall), along with NAACP attorney Constance Baker Motley, accompanied Meredith onto the campus. They walked into the Alumni Center, through a mildly jeering crowd, to the adjoining Yerby Center. In a small auditorium, in the center of the room, two folding tables had been placed together with chairs on either side. Sitting there was the new registrar, a thin-lipped man in glasses with outward angling jaws and a good-looking suit. “Which of you is Mr. Meredith?” Barnett asked. This got laughs. The governor read a proclamation that interposed his authority between the U.S. Supreme Court and the sovereign state of Mississippi. After Meredith’s departure (some Ole Miss students threw rocks at the car going off the grounds), the governor sat around with his advisers. He was feeling jovial and successful. One of these advisers said, “Ross, how far are you going to go with this thing?” Barnett said, “How far would you go?” The adviser said, “I’d make them point a gun at me and tell me to move over. Then I’d move over and say come on in.” There was big laughter. The governor said, “That’s exactly how far I’m going.”

  The Fifth Circuit ordered the university trustees to appear in federal court on Monday morning, the twenty-fourth, to show cause why they should not be cited for contempt. The chancellor of the school and his trustees were now facing the real prospect of jail time. On Monday, in New Orleans, the board took a vote outside the courtroom and agreed to Meredith’s registration the next day. At 9:50 Monday evening Kennedy and Barnett talked. “Governor?” Kennedy said. Barnett: “General, how are you tonight?” Kennedy: “I expect that you probably heard the decision of the court and the agreement of the board of trustees …” Barnett: “Did they agree to that?” Kennedy: “Unanimously.” Barnett: “… That’s really shocking to me. I heard it a little while ago.” Kennedy: “They agreed to do it by two o’clo
ck tomorrow.” Kennedy again pressed for assurances of protection. Barnett sounded almost incoherent: “I tell you now I won’t tell you what I am going to do. I don’t know yet.” The two kept asking each other what time it was. Barnett: “It’s nearly eight o’clock here. What time is it there?” Kennedy: “It’s about ten o’clock.” At the end, Barnett said: “I will let you know what our proceedings will be.” Kennedy: “Thank you, Governor.” Barnett: “It was nice to talk to you.”

  The next day, Tuesday the twenty-fifth, they were on the phone with each other throughout the day. In Kennedy’s mind, or so one can certainly construe from the tapes and transcripts, the registration was now going to go through successfully, one way or the other, no more playacting. Barnett had had his ego-boosting. Chief Marshal McShane and John Doar picked Meredith up from a guest house at Dillard University in New Orleans. The trio flew to Mississippi in a green, twin-engine Cessna 220 owned by the U.S. Border Patrol—but not until Meredith had gone downstairs in the old airport lounge to use the colored bathroom and snack bar. They arrived in Jackson that afternoon. The government men accompanying the applicant had been informed that the registration was going to take place not at Oxford but at a federal building downtown in the capital city. At midday, Washington time, Kennedy and Barnett spoke. Once more, Kennedy kept asking for assurances from the governor that the crowds would be controlled and that there would be no violence. Kennedy: “Will there be anything done by the state officials or the city officials to interfere physically?” Barnett: “I couldn’t promise you that. Not physically.” As the conversation went on, Barnett sounded more and more evasive, as if he could pull a double cross. Kennedy: “Governor, you are a part of the United States.” Barnett: “We have been a part of the United States but I don’t know whether we are or not.” Kennedy: “Are you getting out of the Union?” Barnett: “It looks like we’re being kicked around—like we don’t belong to it. General, this thing is serious.” Kennedy: “It’s serious here.” Barnett: “Must it be over one little boy—backed by Communist front—backed by the NAACP, which is a Communist front?” A few exchanges later, Kennedy said: “Governor, I am only in it because there is an order of the court.… Could I give you a ring?” Barnett: “You do that. At F1-3-4938 and Fleetwood 3-1585 or if both lines are busy, just call the Governor’s office.” Things remained just as unsettled in subsequent conversations. It seemed as if Barnett would relent—and then not relent. “There will be no violence at all,” the governor promised.

  At 4:10 P.M. in Mississippi (6:10 in Washington), about twenty minutes before the arrival of the hopeful enrollee, Kennedy said to Barnett on the phone: “And I understand that there is a big crowd around the State House.… Can you clear the crowds so we don’t make a big circus?” Barnett was on the phone in the Woolfolk State Office Building, which was across the street from the Capitol. The building was jammed with legislators, cops, media. Barnett, responding to Kennedy’s question, said: “You would have a big space. They’re not going to bother him.” Time magazine—unaware of what was happening backstage—would write in its issue the following week: “The great gold eagle atop the State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., glistened nobly in the afternoon sun. Down below, a green automobile pulled up at a sidewalk packed with a rumbling crowd. Out stepped a dapper Negro.” The dapper Negro and his escorts entered the Woolfolk building, past the crowds and TV lights. They rode the elevator to the tenth floor and walked down the hall toward room 1007. Barnett, in his undertaker’s fedora and dark suit, appeared at the door and said again, for the cameras, “Which of you gentlemen is Mr. Meredith?” Again, the governor read his proclamation of interposition. Legislators were standing on chairs and tables and one cried, “Get going! Get going!” John Doar said, “Do you refuse to permit us to come in the door?” Barnett: “Yes, sir.” Doar: “All right. Thank you.” Barnett: “I do that politely.” Doar: “Thank you. We leave politely.” Barnett shouted after them, through the hoots of the crowd: “Y’all come see me some time at the mansion.” Down on the street, as the green sedan pulled away, a teenager shouted, “Goddamn dirty nigger bastard. Get out of here and stay out.”

  When Kennedy called Barnett at 7:25 P.M. (RFK’s time), he was hot. Barnett described what he’d done not quite an hour earlier. “They were cheering our side and booing Meredith. Nobody tried to fight him,” he said. Kennedy: “And he didn’t get registered.” Barnett: “No, I read the proclamation similar to the one I read the other day …” Kennedy: “He is going to show up at classes tomorrow.” Barnett: “At Ole Miss? How can you do that without registering?” Kennedy: “… He is going to show up for classes.… It is all understood.… He is going to go to classes. He is going to be there.” Barnett: “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. I don’t know what we’ll do. I didn’t dream of a thing like that.” A few exchanges later, Barnett said: “If you knew the feeling of about ninety-nine-and-a-half percent of the people in this thing you would have this boy withdraw and go somewhere else.…”

  Kennedy: “… But he likes Ole Miss.”

  Barnett: “I don’t believe you know the background of all this.… I think he’s being paid by some left-wing organization to do all this. He has two great big Cadillacs, no income, riding around here. Who is giving him all this money? You see, General, the NAACP, I told you this morning, no doubt in my mind, it’s a front organization for the Communists and they would do anything about bringing about hatred among the races. We never have trouble with our people, but the NAACP, they want to stir up trouble down here. I wish you could talk to them about the South.”

  Ten minutes later, Kennedy called Barnett back to advise him of the time that Meredith would arrive on campus in the morning. Kennedy: “Governor, this isn’t a question of the boy going to the University of Mississippi. It’s the federal government. If you were here as Attorney General you would have to do the same thing. I never knew the name up until a week ago and have no interest.” Barnett, a few exchanges later: “We would argue all night about that. You can never convince me that the white and the Negro should go together.” Kennedy: “That doesn’t have anything to do with you or me.” Barnett: “One of the questions here is moral turpitude.” Kennedy: “Are you against him because he is a Negro?” Barnett: “Oh, no.”

  The next morning, Wednesday, September 26, McShane, Doar, and Meredith flew to Oxford for the third attempt in a week. This time, Lieutenant Governor Paul Johnson stood in for Barnett, whose plane was said to have been grounded in Jackson by low-hanging clouds. The governor was speeding to the campus by car with two carloads of Mississippi reporters in his wake. At Calhoun City, he had his driver pull over at a filling station so that he could get a Coke and take a leak. Dub Shoemaker, a reporter for the Daily News in Jackson, who was in one of the chase cars, remembered years later that he felt as if he had somehow stepped whole into Robert Penn Warren’s book All the King’s Men, which is a fictionalized portrayal of Huey Long of Louisiana. Barnett was full of greeting and hand-grabbing with all the locals.

  The headline that morning in the New York Times (three Meredith-related stories made page 1) said: “U.S. Is Prepared to Send Troops as Mississippi Governor Defies Court and Bars Negro Student.” At the university, McShane, Doar, and Meredith stepped forward alone to face a line of state troopers and sheriffs. Billy Ferrell was one of them. The lawmen were unarmed—they’d been ordered to form a line unarmed. To Meredith, this didn’t mean that guns and clubs and ropes weren’t in the vicinity. In Three Years in Mississippi, he wrote: “If I know Mississippi white folks there were not many unarmed people there. They had guns on the seats, in their boots, under their belts, in their pockets, and everywhere. We were led to the roadblock about a half mile off the campus where Lieutenant Governor Paul Johnson had set up his retinue, including the properly oriented TV cameramen and radio and news reporters.”

  Doar approached Johnson, who’d been a Marine on Iwo Jima in World War II and who was a former president of the Ole Miss student body. “We wa
nt to go in and get this boy registered,” said Doar. The lieutenant governor, a Bible class teacher, shook his head in a no. McShane, a former New York City cop, an ex-prizefighter with a pug’s classic face, said: “I think it’s my duty to try to go through and get Mr. Meredith in there.” Johnson answered, “You are not going in.” McShane walked up and down the row. Suddenly, he tried to bust his way through the line with a shoulder block. The chief marshal had been instructed by Justice Department people to try to obtain visual proof of a physical resistance, and now he had it on film. McShane balled up his fist. The lieutenant governor balled up his fist. Toe-to-toe stood Mississippi and the U.S. government. But soon it was over. The trio left the campus and returned to Memphis and the Millington Naval Air Station.

  This brought the crisis to Thursday, the twenty-seventh, when events reached their scariest boil and yet didn’t boil over: the day Moore took the photograph. As Meredith wrote in Three Years: “Undoubtedly the most tension-filled attempt was the one that did not take place.” The “greatest Federal-state clash since the Civil War” is how the New York Times described the situation in its lead paragraph on the following morning. There was no clash in physical terms—that was still a couple of days away. In his memoir, Meredith referred to the twenty-seventh as “lynching time.” The word was uppermost in his consciousness during the ninety-minute drive from the naval air station in Tennessee to Oxford in the dying afternoon. Either he was going to be killed by mobs or he was going to get registered—there didn’t seem a lot of room for anything in between. As Meredith and his guards drove out of the gates of the air station, toward Mississippi and “lynching time,” he had begun humming W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”: “I hate to see that ev’nin sun go down.”