stage was set, the actors had their roles, and the curtain was rising when the script abruptly changed: Barnett’s plane was grounded by bad weather in Jackson and Lieutenant Governor Paul Johnson was left to take his place in Oxford. Unfortunately, no one had shared the script with Johnson, who refused to stand aside and pushed back hard against the dumbfounded marshal. The defiant act ingratiated Johnson with the white masses and proved invaluable to his future political career.
Another plan called for the governor and his supporters to make a historic last stand at a gate to Ole Miss, face-to-face with 30 armed federal marshals acting as a shield for Meredith. The lead marshal would pull his gun and point it at Barnett, who would only then call upon his supporters to stand down to avoid bloodshed. When Robert Kennedy repeated the scheme to Barnett and Watkins over the phone, the governor demurred. He would only sound the retreat if all 30 marshals pulled their weapons and threatened to fire.
“I was under the impression that they were all going to pull their guns,” Barnett told an exasperated Robert Kennedy. “If one pulls his gun and we all turn, it would be very embarrassing.”
Then the secret phone negotiations took a bizarre twist. Faced with a federal contempt-of-court charge, a $10,000-per-day fine, and possible jail time, the savior of segregation began to cave to the pressure of pending financial ruin and imprisonment. His hundreds of thousands of white supporters would have been horrified to learn that the chief executive of their “sovereign” state was secretly working with the “forces of tyranny” to assure a black man’s peaceful enrollment at Ole Miss—this from the man who had publicly proclaimed, “Ross Barnett will rot in a federal jail before he lets one nigra cross the threshold of our sacred white schools.” The enemies of segregation were closing in, and Barnett was now negotiating the terms of surrender.
On Saturday, September 29, President Kennedy himself called Barnett to offer a new plan. It called for the governor to rally his forces at the Oxford campus while federal marshals quietly registered Meredith at a state college board office in Jackson. The date was set for Monday, October 1. Barnett could save face by accusing the Kennedys of registering the black student behind his back. Barnett and Watkins agreed to the plan and promised to use the Mississippi Highway Patrol and Mississippi National Guard to maintain calm at Ole Miss. It turns out that both the Kennedy brothers and Barnett were football fans and, in the parlance of the game, their plan resembled a hidden ball trick, in which a running back pretends to have the ball while the actual ball carrier, unnoticed, carries it downfield.
So there was some irony that the big football game between Ole Miss and Kentucky was scheduled for Jackson’s Memorial Stadium that very night. At game time, more than 46,000 fans packed the stands, where the Meredith showdown was generating more buzz than the game itself. As Barnett walked to the governor’s box, the crowd began waving Confederate flags and chanting, “We want Ross. We want Ross.” Barnett, the consummate political showman, couldn’t resist the adoration. Despite his promise to the Kennedys to maintain calm, he chose to play the hero one more time. At halftime he walked to midfield, stood at a microphone, clenched his fist, waved his arms, and shouted, “I love Mississippi, I love her people. I love our customs.” The crowd went into a frenzy.
Ole Miss student Gerald Blessy recalled the scene years later: “I looked back at the crowd and saw anger in the faces of the people right next to me and it sort of flashed through my mind that those rebel flags looked liked swastikas. These were just ordinary school kids who were being whipped into a fever pitch of emotion by their own leaders. It was just like the Nazis had done.”
Commission public relations chief Erle
Another plan called for the governor and his supporters to make a historic last stand at a gate to Ole Miss, face-to-face with 30 armed federal marshals acting as a shield for Meredith. The lead marshal would pull his gun and point it at Barnett, who would only then call upon his supporters to stand down to avoid bloodshed. When Robert Kennedy repeated the scheme to Barnett and Watkins over the phone, the governor demurred. He would only sound the retreat if all 30 marshals pulled their weapons and threatened to fire.
“I was under the impression that they were all going to pull their guns,” Barnett told an exasperated Robert Kennedy. “If one pulls his gun and we all turn, it would be very embarrassing.”
Then the secret phone negotiations took a bizarre twist. Faced with a federal contempt-of-court charge, a $10,000-per-day fine, and possible jail time, the savior of segregation began to cave to the pressure of pending financial ruin and imprisonment. His hundreds of thousands of white supporters would have been horrified to learn that the chief executive of their “sovereign” state was secretly working with the “forces of tyranny” to assure a black man’s peaceful enrollment at Ole Miss—this from the man who had publicly proclaimed, “Ross Barnett will rot in a federal jail before he lets one nigra cross the threshold of our sacred white schools.” The enemies of segregation were closing in, and Barnett was now negotiating the terms of surrender.
On Saturday, September 29, President Kennedy himself called Barnett to offer a new plan. It called for the governor to rally his forces at the Oxford campus while federal marshals quietly registered Meredith at a state college board office in Jackson. The date was set for Monday, October 1. Barnett could save face by accusing the Kennedys of registering the black student behind his back. Barnett and Watkins agreed to the plan and promised to use the Mississippi Highway Patrol and Mississippi National Guard to maintain calm at Ole Miss. It turns out that both the Kennedy brothers and Barnett were football fans and, in the parlance of the game, their plan resembled a hidden ball trick, in which a running back pretends to have the ball while the actual ball carrier, unnoticed, carries it downfield.
So there was some irony that the big football game between Ole Miss and Kentucky was scheduled for Jackson’s Memorial Stadium that very night. At game time, more than 46,000 fans packed the stands, where the Meredith showdown was generating more buzz than the game itself. As Barnett walked to the governor’s box, the crowd began waving Confederate flags and chanting, “We want Ross. We want Ross.” Barnett, the consummate political showman, couldn’t resist the adoration. Despite his promise to the Kennedys to maintain calm, he chose to play the hero one more time. At halftime he walked to midfield, stood at a microphone, clenched his fist, waved his arms, and shouted, “I love Mississippi, I love her people. I love our customs.” The crowd went into a frenzy.
Ole Miss student Gerald Blessy recalled the scene years later: “I looked back at the crowd and saw anger in the faces of the people right next to me and it sort of flashed through my mind that those rebel flags looked liked swastikas. These were just ordinary school kids who were being whipped into a fever pitch of emotion by their own leaders. It was just like the Nazis had done.”
Commission public relations chief Erle
Similar Books
