ustxtxb_obs_1962_10_05_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

r e ay. * * * * TWO TEXAS VIEWS OF MISSISSIPPI HEADING SOUTH FOR THE WINTER? 1 2L1 atre Clrold Alaplec, Star-Telegram Cartoonist FLAGS, ROADBLOCKS, AND TEARS Resistance in Oxford STAR-TELEGRAM CRITICAL Response in Texas \(Continued from Page buildings were so full of gas that classes had to be postponed. Students gathered, in large groups around the Lyceum and Student Union, mumbling their discontent and shouting at the bus loads of marshals being brought into the area. As the morning wore on it became apparent to the students that a sizeable force of U.S. Army troops were in the area, building up strength every moment. Boys were being arrested in large numbers for making belligerant remarks and obscene gestures. It didn’t take long for word to get around that the troops meant business. ‘Worried Sick’ Co-eds, coughing and trying to make their way to classes, still managed to smile sweetly and say “Hello.” Whenever they were approached by reporters, however, they froze up and answered a defiant “No comment.” They were acting under the suggestion of the associated women’s government on campus. One sorority girl ignored the no comment rule and carried on a lengthy conversation with two reporters. “The girls are going home as soon as they can get packed. Their parents are worried sick and have told them to leave.” Around 9:30 a.m. Meredith was escorted from his first class, a course in American colonial history, by a contingent of marshals. He was met by a large group of students who followed him and yelled insults. “Dirty damn nigger. Get the hell out of here. We don’t want any black boys here.” One professor standing in the middle of the Grove and observing the site of the riot, commented, “These are some of the finest people in the world, but when it comes to integration they are like children. You can’t reason with them. Myself, I am a reconstructed rebel from the Midwest and I consider federal intervention do this peaceful campus a dirty shame.” At the end of Sorority Row there is a group of faculty apartments. There were serveral wives out in the yard, walking their children and going about their morning chores. Occasionally they turned their heads to watch a detachment of troops marching by or see a jeep go speeding up the hill with a group of MP’s. If asked about the situation, they replied, “We have no comment. You see we want to eat next month. Why don’t you and all those federal troops go away and leave us alone.” The main pocket of resistence against the administration on campus is the local chapter of the Association of American University Professors. Membership comprises about ten percent of the Ole Miss faculty. Among this group, the chemistry professors seem the most militant. Rumors were circulating around the campus that there was a wholesale resignation of chemistry professors. An associate professor of chemistry, William Herndon, a Rice University graduate from El Paso, told the press that he didn’t mind being quoted. “This place is not the kind of school I want to be associated with as a faculty member,” he said. “They keep an iron hand over the faculty and try to scare everyone. If you want to see what it is like go to the faculty meeting this afternoon. They won’t say anything except give forth with a bunch of platitudes.” Herndon’s advice on the faculty meeting proved to be correct. At a meeting conducted by Chancellor J. D. Williams in Meeker Hall, there was an overflow attendance. Several of the braver faculty members asked the chancellor what would happen if the university would close. After hedging the question, the chancellor finally answered, “If this university closes, it will be every man for himself. We, as faculty members of this institution, have never been stronger in our solidity. There hasn’t been one irresponsible remark made by a faculty member to the press during the past week. Under the circumstances, I think this is laudatory.” There was a long ovation, but you could see that several members of the group weren’t satisfied with the answer. Early in the afternoon, the students started gathering in small groups talking to federal marshals around the Lyceum. “Hell, we don’t like this any more than you do,” said one unshaven, bleary-eyed marshal. “Most of us are from the South and only a minority of the group are in favor of this mess.” Students began to see the irony of the situation. On Fraternity Row students were doing their best to make things unpleasant for the military. They sat on their fraternity house lawns, watching the convoys of troops passing by. Some of them jeered at the trucks and others sang the “Mickey Mouse” song. At one point, a group of students built a barricade out of chest of drawers, only to watch it smashed by the military vehicles. Shortly thereafter, a platoon of soldiers was dispatched to guard the road. By late afternoon most of the important activities on campus were being conducted in the Lyceum. One hundred seventy-five prisoners were being questioned by Justice Department personnel, then processed. Most of the prisoners were white citizens of the lower income bracket. “They have had me here since ten last night and I’ve only had one meal of Krations,” said one old man. Another prisoner, a boy in his late teens, commented, “They won’t even let me call my folks and I know they are worried.” The soldiers were handling the prisoners firmly, but not harshly. All the prisoners answered “Yes sir” and “No sir,” regardless of who talked to them. “They are going to throw live grenades at anything that moves,” asserted one fraternity man to his brothers as they assembled for dinner. “We had better stay in tonight and play some poker and watch TV,” a second boy said. “Yeah, there is too many of them,” added another. Half way through the dinner, another ran in and shouted, “They just received a shipment of vomit gas and they are going to use it tonight.” One disgusted student in the back of the room answered, “As far as I’m concerned they can have the damn place.” By dark there were some 8,000 troops on campus or in the close vicinity. All traffic was being routed out of the campus on one road and very few were being allowed to come in. Downtown Oxford, the scene of heavy rioting earlier in the day, was now heavily guarded by airborne troops. They stopped everyone attempting to enter the town, asked for identification, and searched their cars for weapons. On the way out of Oxford, troops were stationed at every highway leading into town, allowing people to leave, but few to enter. Several people were flying flags at half masta fitting tribute to an embattled but dead tradition. JIM FOWLER AROUND TEXAS Most of Texas’ large dailies expressed a critical view of Gov. Ross Barnett’s actions and the riots in Mississippi, but the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Dallas Morning News took the lead in assailing the federal government. The Star-Telegram published two cartoons by Harold Maples, one showing a caricaturized Robert Kennedy marching toward Mississippi with a rifle and a carpetbag, the other showing four bloody hands labeled “Justice Dept.,” “NAACP,” “Mississippi,” and “Executive Dept.” The Star-Telegram editorialized: “The Mississippi trouble will do great harm to race relations . . . and to relations between North and South. It will set back the cause of racial harmony maybe two generations. Northern agitators have, either by ignorance or for promotion purposes, misinterpreted the Southern desire for racial segregation as racial hatred. . . . The Negro race is being hurt by a sectional clash which, unfortunately, is partly political. . . . Mississippi has done all it could, and both sides have done more than they should have done.” The Morning News praised the President’s message Sunday as “compassionate and conciliatory.” But both political parties, it said, have been guilty “of seizing on the emotional issue of Negroes for partisan advantage.” The NAACP “and every other influence suppoiedly working for the best interests of the Negro,” the News said, “should know that compulsion, by gun and tear gas, is the worst of all possible ways to lift the dignity of Mississippi Negroes in the eyes of Mississippi whites. “By law and by the mores of Southern people, parents have the right to care for their children even at college ageand to choose their associates on the basis of voluntary acceptance. . . . The original blame rests on those agitators determined to cram their desires down the throats of those who are reluctant to swallow.” The Houston Post, on the other hand, said the responsibility rests entirely on Barnett, who “contemptuously defied the law” and “invited violence and disorder by his inaction and by opening the door to extremists, hate groups, and other irresponsible elements . . . What Gov. Barnett advocated was anarchy, not government, and it regretably appears that at the University of Mississippi, it is anarchy that the students are being taught rather than duties and obligations of responsible citizens.” The Houston Press, a ScrippsHoward paper, editorialized that the violence “lies at the .doorstep of . . . Barnett, who belatedly declared that he abhors bloodshed, but did all in his power to encourage it to the point where reason and judgment no longer prevailed. . . . It isn’t students, but politicians who have inflamed these troubles. Students in other Southern universities to which the Pres ident referred have, on the whole, accepted desegregation with dignity and tolerance, after some initial demonstrations in one or two instances. Mississippi’s politicians have made it harder, setting a cynical example of contempt for law.” The San Antonio Express attacked ex-General Walker for betraying “the tradition and teaching of the military and of American history in rallying men to unlawful violence.” It concluded: “The Negro is a citizen. He has certain rights and privileges of citizenship. The Civil War is over. It settled the question of state sovereignty with respect to individual rights of citizens. Insurrection must always be met with overpowering force. Disputes must always be resolved in law. That is the essence of self-rule.” The Corpus Christi CallerTimes said: “An infinity seems to separate the world of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the world of Edwin A. Walker. The contrast in the positions taken by the two generals toward the first attempt to enroll a Negro student at he University of Mississippi reveals a gulf of apparently unbridgeable proportions. . . . We can only hope the Eisenhower view of what is constitutional prevails, for the alternative to government by law is totalitarianism.” UT Assembly Backs Meredith AUSTIN The Student Assembly at the University of Texas formally supported James Meredith in his efforts to enter Ole Miss. By a vote of 21-8, the elective governing body of the University’s 21,000 students approved the following telegrams: To Meredith: “We salute your courage and perseverance in facing overwhelming opposition to stand up for your constitutional rights. Your struggle is exemplary of the principle that individual rights can only be achieved through uncommon valor.” To the Ole Miss student body: -“As fellow students at a state university, we sympathize with your problems, but also remind you that the preservation of freedom and individual rights is the responsibility of every American.” Some 150 University students paused enroute to classes this week for a three-minute period of silence. Student President Marion Sanford Jr. called for the period to “demonstrate our sadness that this should have to come to pass and to further show our support of the authority of the Constitution.” The University has an estimated 300 Negroes among its student body.