Ole Miss reflects on deadly integration

New Crisis, The, Nov/Dec 2002 by Joiner, Lottie

Four decades after a deadly riot engulfed the campus of the University of Mississippi, the school is coming to terms with its tragic past with a year-long commemoration marking the 40th anniversary of its integration by James Meredith.

On the night of Sept. 30, 1962, tear gas filled the campus, commonly referred to as Ole Miss, as more than 30,000 National Guardsmen and other federal troops responded to a riot. Hundreds of angry Whites, protesting the school's integration, tossed bricks, threw bottles and set cars on fire. Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett, a staunch segregationist, had blocked Meredith's enrollment twice, defying court orders that instructed the university to admit the 29-year-old Black student. As a result, President John F. Kennedy sent troops to the college campus to escort Meredith.

By night's end, there were two dead, at least 300 wounded and 200 arrests. But despite the evening's violent protest, history was made the next day as Meredith, escorted by federal marshals, registered as the first Black student at the all-White institution Oct. 1, 1962.

Meredith says he was unaware of all the violence that ensued the night of the riot. Unbeknownst to protestors, Meredith had been taken safely to a men's dormitory where he had fallen asleep.

"No one has understood, but I was fighting a war," says Meredith, 69, from his used car business in Jackson, Miss. "My mission was to destroy White supremacy."

Sidna Brower Mitchell remembers that night. She was shocked at the way protesters were treating the marshals -- hurling verbal insults and throwing bottles and rocks. As editor of the school newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, she published an editorial asking students to obey the law and calling for the end of the violence. Outraged at her seeming betrayal, the student senate censured Brower for speaking out against the riot.

"It was a surprise," says Brower, who now lives in New Jersey. "It hurt. I found out who my friends were."

In September, however, the school's current student government repealed the 1962 censure and in a new resolution honored Brower for her "outstanding jour. nalistic courage."

The commemoration, being called "Open Doors: Building on 40 years of Opportunity in Higher Education," began with a program honoring the federal troops that protected the campus the evening of the riot. Former NAACP chair Myrlie Evers-Williams received a special plaque and helped unveil a permanent exhibit at the law school where her husband, slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, was rejected eight years before Meredith integrated the school. Other projects include an oral history of Ole Miss, symposiums and a civil rights memorial to be unveiled in April. The yearlong commemoration will culminate in September 2003 with an international conference on race.

Donald Cole, the associate dean of the graduate school, says it's important that the nation recognize the impact the school's integration had on race relations.

"A very historic event took place that changed our institution, that changed our state and even changed our nation," says Cole. In 1968, Cole was a young Black freshman at Ole Miss, but he was kicked off the campus after participating in a protest against racial inequities at the school. He returned to the school as a graduate student, eventually receiving a doctorate in mathematics in 1985.

Today Cole notes the progress that the school has made over the past four decades. African American students make up nearly 13 percent of the student body now and have held every major leadership position on the campus, including the first Black student body president in 1999. Last spring, Meredith's son, Joseph, earned his doctorate in business administration, graduating at the top of his class. Meredith says the event holds a special significance.

"The fact that my own blood not only got his doctorate at Ole Miss, but Ole Miss acknowledged him as being the number one student at the school," says Meredith, "that justified my whole life."