The Last Season

by Stuart Stevens

  “I look terrible,” he said with a smile. His eyes caught mine in the mirror. We both laughed and walked out.

  “You come on back if you need to cool off,” the security guard said. “Go, Rebels.”

  —

  Since we had been inside, the crowd in the Circle had grown. Various friends had told me where they had tents before the game, and I’d promised to drop by, thinking it would be easy to find them. But this was like a color-coordinated—red—refugee camp for what seemed like half the football fans in America. “Let’s go over to the flagpole,” Dad said, pointing to the center of the Circle.

  It was hard to believe this was exactly where a pitched battle had been fought on September 30, 1962, the day James Meredith was brought to Ole Miss by federal marshals for enrollment. In the Civil War, the Lyceum had served as a Confederate hospital, and on the night of the Meredith riot it was once again transformed into a combat aid station. In The Race Beat, their great book on civil-rights-era reporting, Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff describe a terrible scene inside the Lyceum that night: “Bloodstains on the floor. Bandaged marshals lying exhausted on the floor…A marshal from Indianapolis had gotten shot in the throat; blood spurted with the rhythm of his beating heart and his condition deteriorated as he lost blood.”

  Two men died that night, a Mississippian in his twenties and a French journalist. In accounts, the young Mississippian seems invariably referred to as a “jukebox repairman,” as if the sheer ordinary and casual charm of his profession made his death more absurd. He was struck in the forehead, most likely by a stray shot. The journalist was shot in the back and the head, probably targeted intentionally as many newsmen were that night.

  In the 1968 Chicago riots at the Democratic National Convention, protesters famously chanted, “The whole world’s watching,” as both a taunt to the police and a validation of the importance of their actions. But that night in Oxford, first in the soft dusk of a hot Mississippi evening and then in the darkness that seemed to last too long, the rioters didn’t want the world to watch; they wanted the world to go away.

  It was both the first student riot of the 1960s and the last battle of the Civil War. It was here, in front of the Lyceum, that the University Greys had mustered in 1861 to fight the Federals; all but three students joined up. In Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, every Grey was killed, wounded, or captured. One hundred years later, armed Federals had returned, and there was no desire to lose again.

  That Saturday night in 1962, when my father and I got home early from the stadium where Ole Miss was grinding out a win over Kentucky, the game was still in the fourth quarter. My mother was listening on the radio. “That son of a bitch,” she said, meaning Ross Barnett. “That little son of a bitch.” She and my father disappeared back into their bedroom, and I went into the kitchen. Elzoria was there, putting away food after the party. She was listening to the gospel music she loved, but I talked her into changing stations so I could hear the last of the game. I helped her bring in glasses while the game played out to its finish. I cheered every Rebel first down.

  Elzoria Kent had worked for my family all my life. It would be that southern cliché of a certain era to say she raised me, but of course that was true. She was short and athletic, with a quick wit and laugh and an ability to find that touch of the absurd that never seemed to lurk far from the surface in the strangely textured world of the South. We could and did laugh about just about anything. I can’t ever remember there being anything I wouldn’t talk to her about; she was more an older best friend than a parent, and I asked her advice on everything.

  “I heard Mr. Barnett speak,” she said. She always referred to him as “Mr. Barnett.”

  “We left at the half. Daddy wanted to go,” I said. “Ole Miss is going to beat everybody this year. Just you watch. Everybody.”

  “Well, wouldn’t that be something,” she said, smiling. She held up a plate of cobbler. “You don’t want some of this by and by, do you?”

  I sat and finished the cobbler while listening to the Rebels win, 14–0.

  “You know something about your mama?” Elzoria said, bringing in some serving plates that had leftover baked ham and sweet potatoes. “She is a handsome waster,” she said, then chuckled. “I love Mrs. Stevens to death, but she is one handsome waster.”

  “The Rebels are the best team in the whole world,” I said to her.

  “Isn’t that something,” she said, poking me lightly with a fork. I laughed. She always made me laugh. Then she sat down to eat ham, and we had some of her cobbler together and listened to the postgame show.

  The next night, President Kennedy addressed the nation on the integration of Ole Miss. He spoke while the riots were erupting but astoundingly was unaware of the violence. “Mr. James Meredith is now in residence on the campus of the University of Mississippi. This has been accomplished thus far without the use of National Guard or other troops.”

  “Thank God,” my mother said.

  We were all watching together, my sister and my mother and father. Like the president, we had no idea of what was happening in Oxford. I was wearing pj’s that had cowboys and Indians on them. For some reason, my mother saved the top of these, and I found it years later, stuffed in a box at our house down on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It was moldy with salt air, and for a moment I stared at it, thinking it was an old rag that had been used to wrap pictures. But then I saw the cowboys with the big hats and the lassos, and it came rushing back to me.

  I stood up to go to my room. My mother motioned for me to sit back down to watch. The whole thing was confusing. I didn’t understand about integration or James Meredith or why the president was mad at us. “Why does everybody hate us anyway? What did we do?”

  My father pulled me into his lap. “Nobody hates us. Some people just do bad things. That’s all.”

  That night, Dad came and sat on my bed, and we talked about what a great team the Rebels had and how they could win another national championship. “They won’t take that away, will they,” I asked, “just because the president is mad at us?”

  He told me the president wasn’t mad and he was a good man. “Some people are full of hate for things they don’t understand. But there are more good people than bad people.” He nodded to the Ole Miss roster I had taped by my bed. “The Rebels are good this year. Real good.”

  That made me feel better. If the Rebels were good, everything would work out.

  —

  At school the next day after lunch, our teacher, Mrs. Davis, came in red-eyed. We liked her a lot, and it was clear she was upset. She told us the headmaster wanted to talk to us.

  In the third grade, I had transferred from the public school in our neighborhood to a tiny Episcopal elementary school, St. Andrew’s. Later, because of the work of my mother and others who followed her, it would grow into probably the state’s best school, with grades one through twelve and a campus like a small college on the outskirts of Jackson. But when I was there, it was just a handful of what seemed to be oddball students in a once grand mansion near collapse that had been donated as some sort of tax write-off. Much of Jackson had been burned when Sherman came through during the Civil War, but this house had been spared, most likely used as housing for Union officers.

  The headmaster, the Reverend Marshall James, was a bubbly sort of clergyman, impossible not to like. He was one of those irrepressibly visionary types who could turn the frequently blown fuses of the old house’s ancient wiring into a science lesson. He always smiled and laughed at the worst jokes, but today he came into our classroom looking very somber. While Mrs. Davis stood off to the side, the headmaster faced us, his hands behind his back.

  “Ladies and gentlemen”—he always called us this—“this weekend a terrible tragedy occurred at the University of Mississippi.” I can remember thinking that something horrible must have happened to the Rebel team. “Two innocent souls were lost in needless violence.” He stopped, and then I realized that he was trying not
to tear up. “A single American Negro named James Meredith was admitted to the University of Mississippi. This was in accordance with the laws of this great nation and state. The president spoke of this last night on national television.”

  There was rustling in the classroom now. Meredith and Kennedy were subjects people talked about, and a lot of the kids around me had parents who weren’t happy with either of them.

  “There was much violence on the campus. You will hear a lot about this in the days and weeks ahead. We will discuss this here at school. But I always want you to remember that it is our duty, as servants of the Lord, to view the world with love in our hearts, not anger or hate. We must drive out hate with love. God loves each and every one of his creations, and God made us all in his image. We know that, because the Bible tells us so.”

  This was a refrain from a song we often sang in school and in Sunday school:

  Jesus loves me! This I know,

  For the Bible tells me so;

  Little ones to Him belong;

  They are weak, but He is strong.

  Refrain:

  Yes, Jesus loves me!

  Yes, Jesus loves me!

  Yes, Jesus loves me!

  The Bible tells me so.

  A lot of students were crying now. I can’t remember if I was. Probably.

  “This is a sad day for Mississippi and America,” he said. “But we will have brighter days. I want you to always remember that, ladies and gentlemen, we will have brighter days, and it is your responsibility to bring more light into this world. And I know each of you will. Now let us pray. Our Father who art in Heaven…”

  After the riot on Sunday, September 30, 1962, Ole Miss was scheduled to play Houston in its homecoming game in Oxford the following Saturday. Coach Johnny Vaught describes the scene in his book, Rebel Coach: “It looked to me like 5,000 canisters of tear gas had been used. The campus resembled a trash dump. By midweek, helicopters were landing on our practice fields. Each day when we worked out there were a couple of thousand troops standing around watching us.”

  No one knew where Saturday’s game should be played, and some wanted it canceled. This was a matter of discussion at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Attorney General Robert Kennedy called Coach Vaught to discuss. Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (later AG under President Johnson) met with Coach Vaught several times. On Wednesday, the Memphis Commercial Appeal ran a story confirming that the homecoming would continue as planned in Oxford: “The University reconfirmed its decision to carry on normal Homecoming activities at Ole Miss, including the game with the University of Houston after more conferences with military and Justice Department officials. United States Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach told a news conference: ‘Meredith has plans which will take him off the campus, irrespective of whether the game is played or not.’ ”

  As I walked through the Grove on a warm afternoon fifty-one years later, it was hard to imagine an assistant attorney general commenting on the game-day plans of one student at the University of Mississippi. But in retrospect, it seemed like a very smart play to defuse any chance for those hoping to confront Meredith on campus.

  On Thursday, news accounts reported the game was being moved to Houston, though that was never confirmed. Finally, on Friday, Ole Miss announced that Jackson was the choice. It was a homecoming that wasn’t at home, but it made sense. This got the game out of Oxford but was still close enough for students to attend, heading off possible anger over the moving of the game to another state. Students and Ole Miss fans could come to the game, wave Confederate flags, yell for their team, and vent any frustrations. The high-level negotiations over the game reflected an appreciation for the power of the sport, at least among white Mississippians. It was an all-white team, and it seems a safe assumption that the fan base was mostly white. It would be fascinating to have some inkling of what black Mississippians thought of the Ole Miss Rebels in those days. Did they take pride that a university from their home state was a football power? Did they listen to Ole Miss defeat every team in that troubled year of 1962 and cheer? Did the team’s being segregated mean support was segregated? None of my friends got excited when Jackson State had a great team, as they often did. We—black and white Mississippians—loved the same game but existed in our separate worlds. It would take years for football to start bringing races together in Mississippi.

  But I wasn’t thinking about that when I was nine years old and one of those white Mississippians; all I thought about was the Rebels winning another game and the chance to see my heroes in person. I remember when it was announced that Ole Miss would play in Jackson. It was on Friday morning, and I was in a gym class at St. Andrew’s School. Because it was in an old house, St. Andrew’s didn’t really have a gym. We played basketball on cracked asphalt in back of the house under rims without nets and threw a football around on a stony dirt patch. My friend Stuart Irby told me about the game location. Later his life would come to a tragic end, but in our school-yard days, Stuart appeared sophisticated and worldly beyond his years. It seemed natural that he would know everything.

  I went straight to the headmaster’s office and asked to use the phone. His secretary, a kind woman who sang in the choir at St. Andrew’s Church, came around from her desk and sat next to me in the cheap chairs that were for visitors. She asked me whom I wanted to call.

  “I need to call my dad,” I said. “It’s important.”

  She nodded sweetly. “Is everything okay? Do you feel okay?”

  “Didn’t you hear?” I pleaded. “The Rebels are going to play tomorrow!”

  It was a sign of St. Andrew’s School’s general benevolence that they actually let me call my dad. I reached him through his secretary. He had an office not too far away in Jackson’s ugliest office building, called the Petroleum Building. It was a failed attempt at modern, covered with bright multicolored panels. My father always said the best thing about having an office in it was that you didn’t have to look at it. I loved to visit him at his office and would play with spools of Dictaphone tape, a magical device that somehow captured his voice. He came on the phone, concerned. But I blurted out, “The Rebels are playing in Jackson on Saturday. Can we go?”

  “I’d heard rumors about that,” he said in a teasing voice. He was probably relieved that was all I was calling about. “Let’s talk about it tonight,” he said. “Everything okay at school?”

  When I got in the car after school, I told my mother about the game and how I had called Dad. “It could be dangerous,” she said. “Who knows what people might get up to after what just happened?” She said the same thing that night when we talked about it over dinner. My parents never argued at the dinner table, but this came close.

  “It’s a football game,” my father said.

  “It’s the Rebels,” I said. Who didn’t want to go see the Rebels?

  “You don’t know what will happen,” my mother insisted.

  “They’ll win,” I said. “The Rebels always win.”

  “I want to go horseback riding,” my sister, Susan, said. She had discovered horses and loved to go to Stockett Stables and ride. It was a place run by our cousin Robert Stockett, where you could rent horses. Robert was a kind, gruff man who told great stories and loved hanging out on the falling-down porch of his stable. Later Robert’s granddaughter Kathryn would write about Jackson in The Help. My sister and I both enjoyed horses, like most kids, but Susan had started to develop a deep lifelong love of horses and riding. I just liked the trail rides and a chance to feel like a cowboy.

  “We have to go see the Rebels,” I pleaded.

  But we didn’t. The next morning, my dad told me we weren’t going but that we’d go to other games. We were in the kitchen, and Elzoria was there. My dad made waffles. That was his thing on weekends. He loved to make them on a big hunk of waffle iron. I still have that thing, and it still works, though it looks like a part to a Russian tank that had gone through a long war. Every Sat
urday, he mixed up the batter and carefully poured it out, like casting gold ingots. When he closed the top, some of the batter always leaked. That was the best part. That batter on the outside would burn crisp, and I’d break it off while the waffle was still cooking, always managing to burn my fingers and my tongue.

  “Mr. Stevens,” Elzoria said, and my father nodded, carefully watching the waffle iron. “What’s wrong with this world when you have to worry about going to a football game?”

  My father turned and shook his head and looked as sad as I could remember. “Some people are just crazy.”

  She nodded. “Ain’t that the truth?”

  The waffle iron started to smoke. I yelled, and my dad turned back to lift the lid. This was always a big moment: to see what color the waffles had turned out.

  “Crazy, crazy,” my father said, carefully starting to lift the waffle. “And crazy mean.”

  Elzoria brought over a plate, and Dad placed the perfect waffle on it and started to pour another.

  “Mr. Stevens,” she asked, “why you reckon they don’t want that boy to go to school?”

  My father watched the batter spread out on the spikes of the iron. “I think they’re scared, Elzoria,” he said.

  “Scared of one boy?” Elzoria scoffed.

  “Scared he’s smarter than they are and a whole lot of others are too.”

  “Can I tell you one thing, Mr. Stevens?”

  “You can tell me anything in the world, and I wish you would.”

  Elzoria laughed. She opened up a metal tin of sugarcane molasses that we’d buy when we went out to the country. I scooped it out and watched it drip down on the waffle, like amber lava.

  “I think if that’s why they’re scared, they probably right.” And she laughed, covering her mouth. She was so tiny that when she laughed, she seemed to move up and down. “Once these boys and girls start going to college, there’s not any stopping ’em. Least that’s how I see it.”