Spies of Mississippi by Rick Bowers

Author:Rick Bowers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Published: 2010-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

June 25, 1962, was James Meredith’s 29th birthday. It was also the day a federal appeals court sent shivers down the spine of the entire white power structure in Mississippi. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the state court ruling and found that Meredith had been denied entry solely because of his race, victimized by “a carefully calculated campaign of delay, harassment, and masterful inactivity.” The court ordered that Meredith be admitted that September. The order set the stage for a dramatic showdown between Governor Barnett and President Kennedy aided by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The clock was ticking. The start of the fall semester was just a few months away.

In July, the Sovereignty Commission rushed Hopkins and Downing back to Attala County in a desperate effort to unearth damaging information on the Merediths. The investigations again proved fruitless.

As fall approached, Commission public relations director Erle Johnston rushed an order to the printer for more than a million postcards with a preprinted message expressing resentment at the “unnatural warfare being waged against the sovereign state of Mississippi.” The cards—to be signed by white voters throughout the South—were addressed to President Kennedy, White House, Washington, D.C.

On the evening of September 13, Governor Barnett went on statewide television and declared the standoff to be “our greatest crisis since the War Between the States” and pledging to resist “the evil and illegal forces of tyranny.” Repeating his promise that “no school will be integrated while I am your governor,” Barnett asked for the resignation of any state official unwilling to “suffer imprisonment for this righteous cause.”

On the afternoon of September 20, Barnett entered a boardroom on the Ole Miss campus, ready for the first of what would prove to be several dramatic face-to-face confrontations with federal marshals who had been assigned to escort Meredith to register for the fall semester. The governor read a statement denying the application, and the marshals and Meredith walked away to try again another day. In a similar confrontation on September 25, Barnett pulled out his trademark humor to endear himself to his supporters and to frustrate his foes. Surrounded by his white supporters as a phalanx of white federal marshals led Meredith into the room, Barnett looked into the sea of white faces and asked, “Which one of you is Mr. Meredith?” The federal agents scowled, Meredith smiled, and the onlookers howled.

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