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.
Meredith became a conservative Republican and worked on the staff of the Late Senator Jesse Helms.
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.
Looks like a 1963 one to me.
Mine was a 1965
Road Trip!!!
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