The Ghosts of Mississippi (10 page)

“You better come on out of here, man,” said Evers. “You’re going to get into a world of trouble with Ruby. She’s raising hell with you!”

Jordan just smiled. As strong as Medgar was, he had an astonishing respect for authority, for following the rules and obeying the leaders. He was the kind of NAACP man Jordan would soon find out he could never be.

The cook handed Jordan a big box of steaks and laughed as he said, “This white man is going to buy the NAACP these dinners.”

Ruby Hurley was blowing the horn when they got back to the car. Jordan put the steaks in the trunk and, without a word, drove back to the retreat. Medgar said nothing. Ruby was tearing into Jordan, lecturing him on his responsibilities. Meanwhile the aroma from the steaks and the fried onions was drifting into the car.

“Miss Hurley, those steaks sure do smell good,” said Medgar.

Ruby Hurley caved in. “Well, I guess they do … ”

When they got back to the old house, the three of them sat in the kitchen and just devoured those steaks and drank and talked into the night. It was a magic moment for Vernon Jordan, so full of contradictions and friendships forged in the strangest of times.

Jordan and Evers became close friends, and Vernon would take every opportunity to visit Jackson. His favorite place to eat was a restaurant on Farish Street called Steven’s, where everybody who was anybody in civil rights could be found at lunchtime. The walk there with Evers from the Masonic Temple offices seemed to take forever because Medgar stopped in every store along the way to chat with the owner. He seemed to know everybody on the sidewalk, asked about their health and their family, and knew their kids by name. Medgar Evers left no hand unshaken.

The sad thing, Jordan remembers, was that the NAACP didn’t seem to realize what a star Evers was until he was gone. He remembers with anger a scene the following spring, when the national conference was being held in Jackson. It was a big success, Jordan recalls. Jackie Robinson and the boxing champion Archie Moore were there. There was a big turnout.

Jordan has never forgotten going with Medgar to drop Gloster Current off at the old Jackson airport after the conference was over. Current was criticizing Medgar mercilessly, hammering away at him for the low membership figures and giving him hell for not recruiting hard enough. Vernon Jordan watched in agony as Medgar Evers broke down in tears.

That was 1962. Ross Barnett was governor and the Citizens’ Councils were at the height of their power. Everyone could see Medgar Evers was risking his life every day, and here was Gloster Current, who could get on an airplane and go back to the safety of his nice home in Queens, New York, badgering him to tears. Jordan couldn’t hold his tongue another minute.

“You leave Medgar alone!” he shouted at his boss. “You have no right to pressure him.”

“No, Vernon,” said Medgar mildly. “Now you leave us alone.”

That was the way it was at the NAACP. Medgar would take it in the neck from his bosses, then go out and work even harder for them.

The conference marked the end of a difficult year. While Medgar Evers carried on the timeworn NAACP strategy — fight segregation in the courts and avoid civil disobedience — he watched a small stream of activists set up shop in his state.

In an October 1961 report to Roy Wilkins, Evers listed the newcomer organizations wading into the dangerous waters of Mississippi. He reported on the Freedom Riders and the growth of other nonviolent groups in the state. In a part of the report that must have alarmed Wilkins, who loathed Martin Luther King, Evers noted that King had drawn a crowd of twenty-five hundred to three thousand people to a mass meeting in Jackson sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). “Less than eight hundred dollars was collected,” Evers pointed out.

The tone of the report reveals a simmering rivalry, a condescending, world-weary attitude that the NAACP would sustain throughout the decade. When Evers described the upstart civil rights groups, his tone was that of a disapproving father whose teenager had flipped the Buick. Listen to his description of SNCC, whose team, led by Bob Moses, had tried a frontal attack on the most Klan-ridden, terror-stricken counties in southern Mississippi:

Evers sounded like a true Mississippian; he didn’t much care for outside interference. By mid-October, Evers reported, SNCC was a “skeleton operation” in Jackson. Most of the leaders who had been arrested were now out on heavy bonds.

But even Roy Wilkins recognized the problem. In 1960 he had told Farmer, who had left the NAACP to join CORE, “You’re going to be riding a mustang pony, while I’m riding a dinosaur.”  Now the SCLC, SNCC, and CORE were scooping up a whole generation of students by offering them something the NAACP would not: action. The movement train was pulling out of the station, and once again Medgar Evers had to decide whether to try to stop it or jump on board.

If there was one symbol of Mississippi’s white heritage and a concentration of its oligarchic impulses, it was the University of Mississippi at Oxford, affectionately known as Ole Miss. The rolling green lawns, the stately columned mansions, and Greek Revival buildings were artifacts from the mythical antebellum South. The school mascot was a character called “Colonel Reb.” The Confederate battle flag was the school symbol.

The sorority and fraternity systems at Ole Miss were actually redundant. The social status of students was established at birth through the complex blood ties and relationships of families: girls were born Tri Delts or not, and boys Sigma Chis, or not, and one hardly needed rush week to draw the distinction. This was white Mississippi society distilled. It was this ossified, tight-knit, lily-white world that became the object of James Meredith’s obsession in the spring of 1961.

Meredith was a junior at Jackson State. He was an air force veteran, a short, wiry man with a smooth moon face that made him seem years younger than he was. At college in Jackson, Meredith studied history and political science. He surrounded himself with a loyal coterie of friends, an “underground” made up of fellow veterans, intellectuals, and others with a militant interest in civil rights. They sought the perfect gesture, the first opening in which to place the wedge between the white man and his power.

On January 21,1961, the day after John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, Meredith wrote to the registrar at Ole Miss asking for application forms. Then he contacted Medgar Evers.

Although Meredith admired Evers, he had never had much use for the cautious, moderate NAACP. He knew, however, that he would need the legal and financial clout of the old association if he ever expected to see the inside of Ole Miss.

Quietly, behind the scenes, Medgar Evers shepherded James Meredith through the maze of the NAACP bureaucracy. Evers steered Meredith to Thurgood Marshall and the Legal Defense and Educational Fund. When Marshall (who would soon be appointed to the federal bench) wanted more information from Meredith about his qualifications, Evers put the call through from his own home.

Marshall, already famous for his bluntness, wanted proof that Meredith’s record was as good as he claimed it was. Meredith, who would prove to be as stubborn as the lawyer, hung up on him. Nobody questioned his integrity. He refused to speak to Marshall again.

Meredith credits Medgar Evers for saving the whole enterprise. Evers soothed both men. He convinced Meredith that producing documentation was good legal strategy, and, more important, he convinced Marshall that Meredith was not as flaky as he seemed. It was Evers’s sheer force of will and persuasiveness that enabled Meredith to proceed with the lawsuit. Evers knew that Meredith was hotheaded, stubborn, arrogant, and maybe a little crazy. But Evers also instinctively knew that Meredith could take the pressure and the abuse and the threats that were ahead of him. That counted more than anything else.

It took eighteen months of court battles, but finally a federal judge ordered Ole Miss to admit James Meredith. Mississippi’s governor, Ross Barnett, chose to ignore the court order, saying it usurped the rights reserved for the slates.

On September 20, 1962, James Meredith made his first attempt to register on the Ole Miss campus. Ross Barnett and a screaming mob of four thousand segregationists turned him away.

Five days later, after another round in the courts, Meredith tried again, this time at a registry office in Jackson. He was accompanied by the head of the U.S. Marshals and by John Doar of the Justice Department. The NAACP had by now taken a backseat to the government lawyers who were handling the case.

Again there was an ugly crowd of hecklers shouting, “Nigger, go home!” Meredith was hustled through the mob and up to the registry door, where the governor stood to block him. Barnett scrutinized the men and then deadpanned, for the benefit of Doar and the other bystanders, “Which one of you is James Meredith?”

Meredith grinned, but Doar was less amused, particularly as Barnett read a statement concluding, “I do hereby finally deny you admission to the University of Mississippi.” Then the governor paused and smiled at Meredith. “But I do so politely,” he added.

“Thank you,” Doar said dryly. “We leave politely.”

For the next week the governor haggled with the attorney general and even President Kennedy over Meredith’s admission. At one point Barnett agreed to let him in if the U.S. marshals would pull guns on the governor to make it look like he was putting up a fight.

By Saturday, September 29, the Kennedys thought they had a deal: the marshals would sneak Meredith onto the campus without making a show of it. There would be no incident.

The big Ole Miss-Kentucky football game was scheduled for that afternoon. The university wisely decided to move the game to the stadium in Jackson rather than draw huge crowds to the already volatile Oxford campus. When Ross Barnett made his appearance in the stands, the band struck up “Dixie,” and the crowd cheered wildly. Rebel flags were waving alongside banners declaring “Go Get ’em Ross.” A huge rebel yell issued from the crowd as Barnett took his seat. They all sang the college fight song with new vigor: “Never, never, never! We will not yield an inch.”

Ross Barnett changed his mind again.

President Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and signed an executive order authorizing the armed forces to enforce the law in the state. On Sunday morning Barnett again told the Kennedys he would quietly allow Meredith onto the campus. He then called on four of his closest allies to fly to Oxford and act as his personal representatives, with a mission to “protect the citizens of Mississippi.” They included the speaker of the Mississippi House, a state senator, a state representative from the lower Delta named C. B. “Buddie” Newman, and Judge Russel Moore. Barnett failed to mention that he had already cut a deal with the government.

Meanwhile it was becoming clear that the situation was not in the hands of the governor or his envoys. Another figure had come to town, and he was organizing his own brand of resistance.

General Edwin Walker was already a familiar figure in Mississippi. He was one of the most rabid anticommunist radicals in the country. Ironically Walker had been in command of the 101st Airborne when Eisenhower had sent in troops to carry out the Supreme Court desegregation order at Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. After that Walker had been posted to Germany, where he was forced to resign after he was discovered indoctrinating U.S. troops with right-wing John Birch Society literature.

When it was announced that James Meredith would be enrolled at Ole Miss by court order, Walker sprang to action from his Dallas, Texas, home. He went on the radio calling for ten thousand volunteers to go to Oxford to rally behind Governor Barnett. He told his followers to bring knapsacks and skillets to Ole Miss. It could be a long siege.

Byron De La Beckwith was a big fan of General Walker, and by Sunday afternoon, September 30, he was on his way to Oxford with a pickup truck full of weapons. Just outside Greenwood, Beckwith was stopped by some “friendly police.” They said they expected he would be coming, and, with some difficulty, they convinced him to turn back.

Hundreds of like-minded citizens from all over Dixie did not turn back. By nightfall the Ole Miss campus was swarming with hard, armed men with a mind to fight the last battle of the Civil War. General Edwin Walker was among them, leading the charge.

James Meredith arrived from Memphis by small plane just before dark. With an escort of armed marshals and John Doar by his side, he slipped onto the Ole Miss campus without incident and was taken to his dorm room at Baxter Hall. A contingent of armed guards was posted there, with orders to shoot to protect him.

They were never necessary. The action was taking place on the other side of campus in front of the elegant, Greek-columned Lyceum building, where the registrar was located. By 7 p.m., two thousand drunk students were taunting some 170 marshals who had taken positions around the building. As more outsiders joined the angry white mob, the marshals finally fired tear gas. At that point the Mississippi Highway Patrol withdrew, and so did the hapless envoys whom Ross Barnett had sent to keep the peace.

Both sides blamed the other for starting the bloodshed. A trooper was hit in the chest with a tear gas canister and nearly killed. A marshal was shot in the throat and lay bleeding for hours because the crowd wouldn’t let an ambulance through. The only reinforcements to arrive all night were a group of local guardsmen led by the writer William Faulkner’s cousin. He was injured in the fight.

Although they begged to use their side arms, the marshals were not authorized to use deadly force. All they could do was fire tear gas and swing billy clubs against a mob with shotguns, pistols, sniper rifles, and, in one case, a rampaging bulldozer used as a tank. Dozens of rioters were arrested and hurled into a makeshift jail in the Lyceum basement. During the night one bystander and a French reporter were killed by .38 bullets.

In the early morning hours the first contingent of army MPs swept the campus. By dawn it was over.

At 8 a.m. Meredith, under heavy guard, walked across the once-lovely campus, now strewn with burned-out vehicles and stinking of tear gas, to register at the university. With his bodyguards he made it in time for his first class, a lesson in colonial American history. Walker was arrested at a roadblock as he was heading out of town.

Although it is said that an organized, violent Klan was not present in Mississippi until early 1964, the retaliation that followed Meredith’s admission to Ole Miss showed a pattern indicating that someone was directing a terror campaign in the state. Whoever it was knew the targets, what they owned, and where they lived.

According to Medgar Evers’s field report from that period, on the night of October 2, a Molotov cocktail was pitched at Dr. Gilbert Mason’s medical clinic in Biloxi. That same night, in a nearby coastal city, another firebomb was thrown into the office of a gas station owned by Dr. Felix Dunn, president of the Gulfport NAACP branch. Evers surmised that the same people were responsible for both bombings. Whoever it was knew quite a bit about both men and their real estate. On October 3, the home of a prominent NAACP leader in Columbus, Mississippi, 250 miles north of Gulfport, was similarly bombed. The next night, in central Leake County, someone fired shots into the houses of Negroes who had signed petitions to integrate the public schools.

At Ole Miss, Meredith was accompanied by U.S. marshals wherever he went. There were no other serious incidents, just some bottle throwing at the dorm and kids calling him names. Some white students started talking to Meredith. A few even joined him at the lunch table. He was getting a lot of mail. Much of it was supportive, but some of it wasn’t. One letter contained a simple piece of verse:

Roses are red, violets are blue;

I’ve killed one nigger and might as well make it two.