He picked up his steno pad and walked by the volunteer section, past the library, to the office of the chairman. The six newspapers she required to see every day waited for her on the desk. A basket of mail rested at one corner.
“Now here is what has happened.” Her blouse was trimly cut. Except for the pearls, the only jewelry she wore was the little American flag on the lapel. She spoke now in the executive mode, pencil in hand, her own notebook open.
“This is very confidential.” She looked to the door, reassuring herself that it was closed. “I had a telephone call last night, just before dinner, from General Walker. He said that since the Supreme Court had acted, he was going to live up to his commitment to go to Oxford. Then he read me the public statement he will issue on Sunday. The big rally is scheduled for that night. I asked him for a copy of his prepared statement but he didn’t want to send it over. What he did want, and asked me for, was a public endorsement by the John Birch Society of what he was doing. Preferably the JBS nationally. If not, at least the George S. Patton Chapter here in Dallas.”
“I’m not sure individual chapters have the authority to do that, do they?” Woodroe asked.
“Good point. And as I’m about to tell you, I got hold of Bob Welch. That took a little jumping around. He was giving a seminar in Peoria and I finally got him in Urbana. He was staying at the home of Revilo Oliver. You know him?”
“I’ve seen his name in American Opinion. And back a while, some of his short book reviews in National Review.”
“Well, I’ve met him. Striking man, taller even than General Walker. A classics professor. Anyway, when I called, the Olivers were giving a reception for him, so Bob said he’d have to call me back from Professor Oliver’s study as soon as he could get away from the party people. Sooo, it wasn’t until eleven that his call came in. I told him about General Walker’s plans to go to Oxford and to make a public statement. Then I repeated as much of it as I could remember.”
“Will the general encourage outright defiance?”
“It’s a very emphatic statement. He even has Christ involved, but I can’t exactly remember just how.”
“What about the declaration of support he asked for?”
“Bob said no-go on a national declaration but said it would be okay for the Dallas Chapter to support the general. But, Bob said, we should do that in general language, not sort of attaching ourselves directly to his declaration. Woody, I want you to put something together for me.”
“Is the something I put together going to acknowledge that he’s going off to Mississippi?”
Helena paused. “Well, I’m not sure.” She doodled on the paper and bit her lip. She looked up suddenly. “What do you think?”
“We’ve got to have a reason for issuing a statement, going out suddenly, on September 28, so . . . Hang on. Helena, let me go to my typewriter and come back. What I’m thinking of I can get done in three minutes.”
“Take as long as you need. But that statement is top priority. I have a lot on my desk and I’ll be here all morning.”
Woodroe was quickly back. He handed her a sheet of paper.
The George S. Patton Chapter of the John Birch Society today joined with other chapters in deploring the Supreme Court’s decision setting aside the lower courts’ validation of Mississippi law respecting admissions policy at the University of Mississippi. Dallas’s own General Walker has publicly called on the federal government to abide by state law and the tradition of the separation of powers. We will welcome reports from him after his planned visit to Oxford.
“That’s . . . perfect.” She looked up, a smile on her face. Then, “Now I’ve had another thought. This may require one more call to Bob Welch, though he’ll be hard to get for a while—he was leaving Urbana early to fly back to Boston.” She looked out the window. “But maybe we can figure this out on our own. My idea is: You should go to Oxford and keep your eye on the general. Maybe even help him out, if it’s the kind of situation you can help with. If you’re willing to go, we don’t really need Belmont’s okay. We can finance your trip from our own funds.”
“I couldn’t very well do that without checking with the general, could I?”
“That’s a problem. He’s already en route. I can find out where he’s staying. Jody would know that.”
“I’d guess, Helena, that the whole world will know about ten minutes after General Walker lands where General Walker’s staying.”
“Yes, I see your point. But do you agree to go? I’ll tell Bob we couldn’t get hold of Walker, that he was traveling, and that I thought it would be a good idea and we had to decide quickly.”
There was no seat on the Memphis flight until Sunday. Woodroe went to his Royal portable typewriter. First, a letter to his mother, though with only the sparest description of his new assignment, and no mention at all of what he sensed was coming up at Oxford. Then a letter, overdue, to Theo Romney.
“Our man is bound for Oxford, if you’re watching the evening news and the Mississippi scene. I’m going there myself. I’m in kind of an ambiguous position—I’m really going there for the JBS. We’re supposedly all on the same team, but I’m just not sure about telling the students to block the enrollment of that Negro student. Theo, us folks from Utah aren’t . . . racists. I never even felt the urge, but I assume there’s got to be an urge to do it, to look down on Jews and Negroes. So many people do. I can’t remember if in your course you commented on how the Chinese railroad workers were treated when they crossed God’s country. That’s our God, Theo. I haven’t forgotten. Other Christians get it almost right. We get it all right.
“You’ll certainly be reading about the general in Mississippi. I hope you won’t be reading about your old pal.”
He signed off, as always, “With gratitude, Woodroe.”
He added a P.S. “If I get back before the world ends, I’ll shoot down, say hello. Save some sherry for me and don’t put too much sun on Provo Peak.”
At the Memphis airport, Woodroe took the airport limo and traveled downtown to the bus terminal. He boarded the packed bus for Oxford just before it pulled out. He had to stand up the whole of the ninety-minute trip. There were mostly young people, of college age. They were excited and talkative. A few minutes into the trip, a blue-eyed blond girl launched a song, and others quickly joined in. The songsters were especially robust in their rendering of “Dixie,” which they sang militantly soon after the bus pulled away from Memphis, and again just before it pulled into the station in Oxford.
Another girl, probably nineteen or twenty, was seated by the window, to one side of Woodroe. Her red hair was in braids and she was busy with a heavy black crayon. Standing in the aisle, clinging to the overhead strap, Woodroe, looking down, could see what she was writing on the cardboard placards her companion handed her, one after another, from the pile on his lap. When she had finished one, she would hand it back to her supplier, who would place it on the bottom of the pile.
Woodroe watched as the block letters were written out. “HANG WARREN.” She did three or four of these. There was “GIVE US LIBERTY OR DEATH.” She did “NIGGER GO HOME,” but after sketching it she paused and deliberated. She had a conversation with her companion. He called back to a student called Ray, who got up from his seat, four rows back, and walked up the aisle to where the artist-activist sat. Woodroe couldn’t hear what the three said, but after Ray returned to his seat, the girl tore that placard in half and resumed with others.
The students were met by a delegation from Ole Miss and walked off excitedly, preparing for the big evening ahead. Helena had said she’d ask Jody to make reservations for him at the same hotel as the general, which was the Hilton-South. Woodroe spotted a taxi and told the driver to take him to the Hilton Hotel.
“Who’s stayin’ at the Hilton Hotel is General Walker. Did you know that?” The driver, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, had the radio on.
“No,” Woodroe said. “I’m in town to sell books, schoolbooks for
the students.”
“The students ain’t reading books tonight, mister. They’re fixin’ to demonstrate against the federals. The president’s going to talk about it tonight.”
“President Kennedy’s doing a television talk?”
“Yes, sir. Ten-thirty P.M. And it’s all about what’s goin’ on here in Oxford, Mississippi.”
Signing in at the hotel, Woodroe spotted the typewritten notice posted on the desk. “GENERAL EDWIN A. WALKER WILL MEET WITH THE PRESS AT THE HILTON-SOUTH CONFERENCE ROOM AT 7:30.” It was just after seven. Woodroe took his bag to his room, looked over at the bedside telephone, and thought suddenly, Why not?
“I’d like to speak with General Walker.” . . . No, he didn’t have the general’s room number.
There was a pause. Then, wide-eyed, Woodroe was staring into the phone after hearing the familiar voice.
“General, this is Woodroe Raynor. Helena Crowder suggested I come to town and . . . you know, in case you need any help.”
“Thanks, son. I’m all set up, doing a press conference downstairs in just a few minutes. Then some students are coming for me and I’ll go on campus for a rally. I suppose you can come, too. Why not? That’s the idea, rally the freedom fighters. So I’ll see you later, Raynor.”
Woodroe, impatient with the laggard elevator, walked down the four floors to the lobby and over to the entrance to the conference room. He could see into the crowded room, floodlit by camera lights. A hotel attendant at the door thrust out his arm to keep him out. “We’re full, sir.”
He pulled out his Birch Society card marked STAFF and said, “I’m with the general.”
Once admitted, he edged himself along the wall and found a spot alongside others who couldn’t get a seat.
At exactly 7:30, General Walker, preceded by two hotel men doing duty as security, strode in.
There was a considerable stir. The television cameras began turning.
The general walked to the lectern and raised his hand. “I have a statement—”
“Louder. Loud-ehhrrr.”
General Walker knew all about microphones and loudspeakers and electrical defects. He pulled out a heavy blue pen and tapped the head of the microphone, turning it clockwise, then counterclockwise.
“How’s that, men?”
There was a murmur of assent.
“I have a statement to make, after which I’ll take questions.”
He leaned just an inch or two closer to the typewritten sheet on the lectern and began:
“This is Edwin A. Walker. I am in Mississippi beside Governor Ross Barnett. I call for a national protest against the conspiracy from within.”
Woodroe looked about. The reporters were taking notes. There were spectators from the Oxford community, he guessed, but mostly he was in a room full of students dressed in jeans and sports shirts. Everyone was keenly attentive.
“Rally to the cause of freedom,” the general continued reading, “in righteous indignation, violent vocal protest, and bitter silence under the flag of Mississippi at the coming use of federal troops.”
He paused and looked up from his text for a moment.
“This today is a disgrace to the nation in dire peril, a disgrace beyond the capacity of anyone except its enemies. This”—the general’s voice rose—“is the conspiracy of the crucifixion by anti-Christ conspirators of the Supreme Court in their denial of prayer and their betrayal of a nation.”
There was silence, except for the whirring of the cameras. After a bit there was applause at the back of the room. Tentative applause, Woodroe thought. Not the kind you expect after a great call to action from a great American war hero. Perhaps they were waiting for more? But the general had put down his notes. He had finished his statement and was ready for questions.
Walker raised his hand. “Before we take questions, somebody is smoking a cigarette back there. Please put it out.”
Again, silence. Then, from the floor, “General, I think I have your statement down pretty well. You said it was time for . . . ‘violent vocal protest.’ What do you mean by ‘violent’?”
“‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ We Texans were brought up on that.” Again there was silence. Elaboration was expected.
The same voice came back. “General, I know about that . . . great statement by Patrick Henry. But what I’m askin’ is, Are you recommending to the students that they resist by force what the federal troops are called in to do?”
“I’m not going to try to improve on the language of Patrick Henry.”
The questioner gave way to a young woman standing by a television camera. “General, I’m here for Station WMCT. Is it true you’re going from here to the campus to address a student rally?”
“I am here to do what I can for my country.”
“Yes, but what are you going to urge the students to do?”
“I will urge them to do their duty.”
Woodroe could hear the reporter seated at knee distance from the questioner mutter to his colleague, “Oh, shit. We’ll just have to see what he does. What he says to the kids.”
General Walker said it was time for him to meet with the student leaders.
He walked out of the room. There was, again, a smattering of applause.
20
THE STATES’ RIGHTS COMMITTEE leader, law student Roy Atkinson, lanky, earnest, highly motivated, had labored since his arrival that afternoon from Memphis to put together something that could serve the protesters as center stage. Of course it would have to be at the Circle, the central green in the academic quarter of the university. He knew he wouldn’t be able to set up anything like what he had done junior year, for his boyhood friend from Tupelo, Elvis Presley. Back then he had made provision for twelve thousand students who, seated on the grass, exulted over Elvis-sound on the eve of Elvis’s departure for the army. Acting then as Ole Miss coordinator, Roy had had the help of two sound technicians who wired in loudspeakers at the quadrant corners of the Circle. Today he’d have to settle for a single microphone with loudspeakers placed at either end of the Confederate monument standing at the head of the Circle, in front of the Lyceum.
Ole Miss was officially on the governor’s side. It was the admissions policy of the university, defended by Governor Ross Barnett, that kept Negro students away. Still, the frenzied administrators at Bryant Hall were not about to expedite Roy Atkinson’s return to campus for the purpose of galvanizing a student protest that might well get out of hand.
At 8 P.M., Ole Miss chancellor John Davis Williams and two aides looked out through the broad windows in his office to the expanse of the Circle the students were rapidly filling. It would be a long night, John Williams sensed.
As arranged, a squadron of U.S. marshals would escort James Meredith to his dormitory room—the first black in history to set foot on the university campus as a student. General Walker was in town and would be a speaker at the monument site. At 10:30, President Kennedy would speak from the White House, presumably to urge submission to the law. Muriel Stetson, the forever-blond television news personality from Memphis’s WMCT, was already on campus. She had set up at one end of the monument and was interviewing students as they passed by.
“She’s been talkin’ here nonstop for nearly two hours,” the chancellor commented, turning dejectedly from the window to the television on his desk, from which Muriel’s voice, it seemed, issued endlessly.
The chancellor’s aide commented, “Every time she talks about protests, she makes it sound like anybody who protests is a Confederate survivor. Notice how she points over at the monument every couple of minutes?”
“Yeah,” said the chancellor. “I’m surprised WMCT isn’t handing out free bullets. . . . Oh, here we go.”
General Walker had arrived and there was great shouting and revelry. The WMCT camera dollied to the nest of student organizers. Roy Atkinson was talking excitedly with the general. The camera looked out over a crowd getting denser by the minute. Placards were cropping up. Many
called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. One double placard said, “JFK GO HOME,” and on the tier-placard directly under it, “AND TAKE JIM-BOY WITH YOU.”
The camera showed a student grabbing Roy’s shoulder and saying something to him. Roy, arrested by what he had heard, turned to the general and pounded his right fist into the palm of his left hand. Muriel Stetson came back on screen.
“We have news here from our field contact that the Negro student James Meredith has entered Ventress Hall protected by twenty U.S. marshals—correction, that’s eighteen U.S. marshals. We’ll see if we can get a comment on that from student leader Roy Atkinson. Roy? Roy? . . . Well, we’ll have to wait on that.” The camera focused on Atkinson, who was talking again with the general and pointing his finger at the lectern. “I guess they’re getting ready to hear from General Walker. Let’s tune in.”
Roy was now tapping on the microphone. The noise from student demonstrators posed an apparently impossible obstacle to getting heard. Hoping that the presence of the general himself, in the spotlight, would silence the students, Roy could be heard only by those close by as he introduced “the greatest general since Douglas MacArthur, who”—but even the television mike lost the ensuing words, then picked up “. . . will now. . . .” Again words were lost.
But now the microphone was in the hands of former major general Edwin A. Walker. When young Captain Walker had been assigned in 1943 to lead a parachute raid, the colonel serving as military coordinator discovered to his dismay that Walker had never before used a parachute, let alone qualified as a paratrooper. This discovery was less than one hour before the mission was due to lift off from the airfield for a practice run. He was scanning the roster desperately for a replacement leader when Walker rose from the briefing room and said, “Just tell me how to put it on, Colonel.” Walker was oblivious to surrounding disturbances.
Getting It Right Page 12
