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Integrating Ole Miss: A Transformative, Deadly Riot
NPR ^ | October 1, 2012 (50th Anniversary) | Debbie Elliott

Posted on 10/09/2025 5:28:14 AM PDT by tired&retired

Fifty years ago — Oct. 1, 1962 — the first black student was admitted to the University of Mississippi, a bastion of the Old South.

The town of Oxford erupted. It took some 30,000 U.S. troops, federal marshals and national guardsmen to get James Meredith to class after a violent campus uprising. Two people were killed and more than 300 injured. Some historians say the integration of Ole Miss was the last battle of the Civil War.

It was a high-stakes showdown between President Kennedy and Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett.

"I'm a Mississippi segregationist and I am proud of it," the governor declared.

Publicly, Barnett promised to block Meredith from the campus in Oxford, despite a federal court order. Privately, he was on the phone trying to strike a compromise with Kennedy.

While Barnett wanted to save face by defending Mississippi's segregationist laws, the president told him he had a responsibility to uphold federal law.

By Saturday, Sept. 29, 1962, Kennedy was deploying federal marshals to Oxford, and Barnett was making a fiery speech at an Ole Miss football game.

"I love Mississippi! I love her people, our customs," he said. "I love and I respect our heritage."

History professor Chuck Ross, director of the African-American Studies Program at Ole Miss, says the speech "was almost like firing on Fort Sumter in 1861."

"A call to arms ... 'We're getting ready to be invaded, we really want you as a Mississippian, a white Mississippian, to respond,' " Ross says.


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: 1962; jfk; npr
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To: bort

Meredith became a conservative Republican and worked on the staff of the Late Senator Jesse Helms.


21 posted on 10/09/2025 7:49:02 AM PDT by Swirl
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To: tired&retired
Oxford town, Oxford town
Everybody's got their heads bowed down
Sun don't shine above the ground
Ain't a-goin' down to Oxford town
He went down to Oxford town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford town

Oxford town around the bend
Come to the door, he couldn't get in
All because of the colour of his skin
What do you think about that, my friend?

Me, my gal, and my gal's son
We got met with a tear gas bomb
Don't even know why we come
We're goin' back where we came from

Oxford town in the afternoon
Everybody's singin' a sorrowful tune
Two men died 'neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon.

22 posted on 10/09/2025 11:44:00 AM PDT by spankalib
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To: tired&retired

Looks like a 1963 one to me.


23 posted on 10/10/2025 6:55:11 AM PDT by mfish13 ( )
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To: mfish13

Mine was a 1965


24 posted on 10/10/2025 7:00:30 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: tired&retired

Road Trip!!!


25 posted on 10/10/2025 1:17:27 PM PDT by mfish13 ( )
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