Wednesday, Oct. 3, 1962 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
The Crisis in Dixie
The case of James Meredith, notwithstanding the violence and bloodshed, is closed. The question of whether a Negro has a right to attend a federally subsidized university has been answered with tear gas and guts. The question of who has control of the nation—has been answered with troops and terror.
As President Kennedy so succinctly put it: "Americans are free to disagree with the law but not to disobey it."
It is too early to tell what effect the Meredith story will have on future race relations in this country. Perhaps the race hatred and demagoguery of warped minds will not be tolerated any longer in 20th Century America. And if they are tolerated, then the Meredith case will have had no meaning.
Yet the side issues of the "Ole Miss" episode may,
in the long run, have greater significance than the integration of the 114-year-old "all-white" school.
With open, pre-meditated defiance, Gov. Ross Barnett refused to obey the law, several times placing himself in contempt of the courts. The fact that Meredith finally was able to register at the university does not erase the mockery Barnett made of the law. His crime has been committed, and he has been found guilty in our legal chambers. Barnett now must pay for that offense or his example will lead to greater mockery and defiance of the courts.
Other remnants of debased mentality lay open in their nakedness, and the nature of the pseudomartyrs and "do-anthing-for-votes" politicians frightens the imagination.
Perched on the statue of a "Rebel," ex-General Edwin A. Walker told the mob of students and "non-
students" that their militancy is pointed in the wrong direction. He is greeted with jeers and bends to the will of the mass. He praises their courage and sounds the attack.
Walker, a self-proclaimed John Bircher, spent his pre-Mississippi days warning the nation of the "Socialist-Communist" elements in Washington and how the government is selling out to the Reds. Yet in this one act—when he urged the rioters forward—he did as admirable a job as Khrushchev could ever dream of doing to win support among uncommitted nations in Africa and Latin America for the Communist bloc.
Sitting somewhat distant from the prejudices of the United States, perhaps Europeans can rightfully look down and observe the Meredith case as "an outburst from another age."
—Arthur C. Miller
'... Cannot Wipe Out Social Stigma ...'
Students rioted at the University of Mississippi Sunday night. Two bystanders were killed and 75 people were injured.
Why?
Is it simply because these students don't want to go to school with a Negro? Is it because their
parents don't want their children to go to school with a Negro?
James Meredith
HISTORICALLY THE PROBLEM can be traced back further than Sunday night. A trait that becomes ingrained in the American way of life — especially if it is the basis of a sectional economic structure — is hard to dismiss with the snap of a finger, the Emancipation Proclamation, or a Civil War.
The economic dispute was, in fact, settled by the Civil War. Slave labor was outlawed, and the Negroes were out on their own.
However, a four-year-long war cannot overnight wipe out a social stigma that has been developing in the United States since Dutch traders first brought slaves into the country in 1721.
But the authority of the federal government cannot really help James Meredith overcome this social stigma. He is a taxpaying resident of the State of Mississippi; he is giving financial support to the University of Mississippi in his payment of taxes; he has a high school diploma and his discharge papers from the Air Force. Why shouldn't he attend the University?
If one Negro wants to swim in a sea of white faces in the Deep South, he should at least be given the opportunity to trv.
Ben Marshall
Photos Courtesy United Press International
Which Is Subservient?
'... Not Just a Political Affair . . . '
There is a feeling by some that the Civil War resolved forever the issue of states' rights. These observers dismiss the Mississippi crisis as nothing more than an attempt by Gov. Ross Barnett to glean votes from the Mississippi populace.
It is true that Barnett will lose nothing politically by his actions at the University of Mississippi, but to dismiss the whole affair as a political move is a dangerous premise.
of a century, took the earlier writings of Madison and Jefferson and declared that the individual states could nullify and declare void any action of the federal government.
In the middle of the 19th century, not satisfied with nullification, states' righters carried their struggle to its bloodiest phase: secession.
The result of this struggle cost 500.000 lives and left the South a smoldering ruin — but it changed little. It proved only that the road to states' rights supremacy did not
lie with secession.
REGARDLESS OF Gov. Barnett's motives, one fact remains: he has hit upon a feeling that supposedly died with the Civil War 100 years ago — a feeling that the federal government is subservient to the will of the states.
THE STRUGGLE has continued on until today. One hundred years have changed little — there is still the feeling that the federal government is subservient to the states.
The Mississippi crisis cannot be dismissed as a vote-scheme by Gov. Barnett. The crisis is the continuation of a battle to decide what the nature of these United States is to be — a battle not likely to be decided in our lifetime. Zoe Winkworth
-Zeke Wigglesworth
Fighting Battle On Own Terms'
Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett slowly but inevitably lost his battle to keep the University of Mississippi a school for whites only. In the eyes of many Mississippians he fought the good fight, but he lost before he began. He lost at Little Rock five years ago.
Perhaps he had forgotten the precedents set in Little Rock. Perhaps he thought he could overwhelm those precedents and set new ones. The Kennedys might not have been as firm as Eisenhower. Or Barnett simply may have been a fool. These are just a few possible explanations.
BUT BARNETT DID not forget Little Rock and the precedents set there. He knew that because of these precedents the Kennedys were even less likely to back down than Eisenhower. They could not back down even if they would.
Many in the North and probably some. in the South have labeled Barnett a fool. These same people labeled Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus a fool when he tried to re-introduce the doctrine of forceful nullification five years ago. Surely no one but a fool would begin a fight with no hope for victory. Only fools and heroes fight such battles with so much vigor.
Ross Barnett is not a fool. He is a hero. And his cause is not segregation at "Ole Miss." He is the hero of the "Ross Barnett for governor forever and ever" movement.
Barnett remembers precedents besides those set at Central High School in Little Rock. He remembers precedents set in the Arkansas governor's mansion. He knows that one man has been in that mansion for four terms and un-doubtedly will be there for a fifth.
ROSS BARNETT IS NOT a fool with no chance to win, because his is not the battle of the racists. His is the battle to perpetuate his term as governor. He is going to win this battle just as Faubus won the same battle in Little
To examine the struggle that has surrounded states' rights — a struggle, incidentally, born with this nation — one must begin with this basic fact: the issue has always remained basically the same.
Rock. Ross Barnett knows precisely what he is doing. He chose his windmill wisely.
Faubus is still governor of Arkansas even though Negroes are graduating from Central High School in Little Rock. And Barnett will be governor of Mississippi long after James Meredith has graduated from the University of Mississippi.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were among the first to come up with the idea of "nullification." In the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1799, the two statesmen enunciated the proposition that the federal government was no more than an "agent" of the individual states, and therefore was responsible to them.
Gov. Ross Barnett
Ross Barnett is a master of southern politics of the old school. He knows how to win and how to keep on winning. He is not fighting the same battle that the Kennedy's are fighting. He is fighting his own battle on his own terms and he will win his own victory.
James Meredith will win his victory, too. But he will not defeat Ross Barnett because the two are on different battlefields.
EARLY IN THE 19TH century, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, destined to be a leader in the states' rights struggle for a quarter
—Dennis Branstiter
'How Far Can a Man Go ... '
How far can a man go in opposing the federal government? This is the primary question which must be answered concerning former Army Gen. Edwin Walker's violent involvement in the Mississippi desegregation crisis.
Gen. Edwin Walker
When James Meredith was escorted to an apartment on the all-white University of Mississippi campus by about 400 federal marshals, it seemed the end of a tense situation and the end of one of the Constitution's severest tests.
BUT IT WAS NOT the end. Violence erupted and before it was over two men were dead and many others were wounded. Gen. Walked led a charge of 1,000 students against the Army trucks
carrying the marshals. After his attack was beaten off by tear gas bombs, Gen. Walker said he would regroup his forces and charge again.
Gen. Walker had indicated his opposition to the government before. He is an avowed member of the John Birch Society. He believes that the government is giving the country to the Russians and this may be his battlefield to awaken American to "the conspirary from within."
GOV. BARNETT believes he had legal basis for his opposition in the doctrine of nullification. He also claims Biblical support of segregation.
Gen. Walker had no legal basis for his attack. He was an outsider who deliberately precipitated an attack on government officials.
Freedom of speech is guaranteed under the Constitution, and Gen. Walker has the right to speak on any subject that suits him so long as he observes the law against slander.
But he has no constitutional guarantees to attack federal officers and to incite others to do so. He will now face the consequences for violating federal law the same as any other citizen.
Jerrv Musil