[MS] Guardsmen receive overdue recognition [40 years after Meredith] [barf alert]

Delaware County (PA) Daily Times ^ | 10/02/02 | Delaware County (PA) Daily Times editorial board

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Editorial: Guardsmen receive overdue recognition

October 02, 2002

Four decades ago, one of the most shameful episodes in American history took place when a mob tried to prevent James Meredith from becoming the first black man to enroll at the University of Mississippi.

Two people were killed and more than 200 were injured as a result of the riot that ensued.

National Guardsmen and U.S. Marshals withstood bottles, bricks and verbal venom from hundreds of white people who set blazes and fired shots in their fight against integration of "Old Miss."

Murray C. Falkner, the National Guardsmen who led the federal troops onto the campus, later found bricks and a Molotov cocktail in the back of his truck.

"It didn't go off, but if it had it would have blown me and my driver's heads off," said Falkner.

It took more than 30,000 troops to restore peace to the campus.

Yesterday Falkner, who is now 74, was among the former federal lawmen who returned to the University of Mississippi for the long overdue recognition they deserve.

It's recognition that even U.S. Army officials declined to deliver 40 years ago because, according to an April 1963 memo, they didn't think the publicity would be "in the best interests of the U.S. Army or the nation."

Medals, they maintained, shouldn't be given in conflicts between soldiers and Americans.

In other words, the bigots were such bullies --- both physically and politically --- they even instilled fear in military officials four decades ago.

And so these federal freedom fighters had to wait 40 years to earn acknowledgement for their brave deeds, and it didn't come from federal officials. Instead, it came from the current Mississippi governor, Ronnie Musgrove, who presented them with symbolic keys to the city.

While these men saw themselves as soldiers carrying out their orders and didn't ask for glory, the recognition of their bravery is important because they fought an enemy in their own back yard.

It is currently echoed not far from here in York, where three men including a former mayor are on trial for the shooting death of a 27-year-old black woman during race riots in 1969.

It is an enemy that still gnaws at the fiber of this nation. Hate is not violently manifested as often as it was in the days before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, butit still poisons our society.

It is evident in seemingly benign criticisms of "political correctness" and "multi-culturalism" by so-called media celebrities who only give license to the lunatic fringe that begets "white supremacy."

Violence does result, as proven in 1999 when 21-year-old white supremacist Benjamin Nathaniel Smith went on a shooting spree in the Midwest, killing a black man and a Korean and wounding six Jews before turning the gun on himself.

Just the year before, 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in Wyoming by two men because he was gay. The year before that, a black man in Jasper, Tex. was dragged to his death by a klansman and his associates.

Then there were the soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C. -- one of them a Pennsylvanian -- who, in 1995 allegedly went "hunting for blacks" and killed a young couple.

There were 32 suspicious fires reported at black churches in the United States between January 1995 and June 1996.

The hate is disturbingly close to home, as evidenced by a former Concord Township resident who, in 1994, had the dubious distinction of being Grand Dragon of the Pennsylvania KKK at the tender age of 27.

In 1998, civil rights lawyer and Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees told a crowd at Penn State University's Delaware County campus in Middletown that Pennsylvania probably has more white supremacist groups than any other state in the Northeast.

And so we should take every opportunity to hail heroes such as Murray C. Falkner who have risked their lives fighting the civil wars created by hate in this country. Sadly, the battle goes on.

©The Daily Times 2002

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