Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals: This federal
court strongly endorsed
racial justice in the deep
South.
Wisdom, John Minor
(1905–99): Fifth US Cir-
cuit Court judge who
helped dismantle Jim
Crow.
When Meredith sued Ole Miss, his case was heard in the South’s most
unreconstructed federal courtroom. Judge Sidney Mize, a believer in genetic-
ally fixed racial differences, added insult to injury by holding a kangaroo
court. Sitting in front of a mural of slaves picking cotton, Mize denied
Motley’s request to depose university personnel, even though the university
deposed Meredith. Mize then postponed the trial, claiming the court’s docket
was too full. When the trial ultimately resumed, Mize hinted that Meredith
was morally unfit for Ole Miss because Meredith registered to vote in a
county different from his legal residence. (Meredith had lived in both coun-
ties and was unsure where to register.) The registrar told the court that
Meredith was a ‘trouble maker’ with ‘psychological problems.’ Mize agreed
with this assessment and issued a dubious finding that Ole Miss had not
excluded Meredith because of his race.
A tussle ensued within the federal courts. In June 1962, the Fifth Circuit
Court of Appealsreversed Mize’s ‘never-never land’ decision and ordered
Ole Miss to admit Meredith that fall. The majority of judges – John Minor
Wisdom, Elbert Tuttle, Richard Rives, and John P. Brown – held that Ole
Miss had ‘engaged in a carefully calculated campaign of delay, harassment,
and masterly inactivity’ to exclude Meredith for racial reasons. When the
order was appealed to the US Supreme Court, justice Hugo Black forbade
state officials from blocking Meredith’s immediate enrollment into Ole Miss.
Unwilling to surrender, governor Ross Barnettdecried Meredith’s admis-
sion to Ole Miss as ‘our greatest crisis since the War Between the States.’
Beholden to the Citizens’ Council, Barnett held out for six more weeks until
Ole Miss erupted in gunfire. The grandstanding governor, whose father was
a Confederate veteran, stirred up racial hatred to divert attention from
repeated gaffes, a sales tax hike, and a scandal over gold-plated faucets in his
mansion. Resurrecting the discredited doctrine of states’ rights, Barnett inter-
posed the ‘sovereignty’ of Mississippi against federal authority over educa-
tion, vowing that ‘No school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your
governor....We will not drink from the cup of genocide.’ Appealing to
white fears, he claimed that ‘there is no case in history where the Caucasian
race has survived social integration. We must either submit to the unlawful
dictate of the federal government or stand up like men and tell them,
“NEVER!” ’ The governor’s incendiary words encouraged the violence that
followed.
Mississippi’s defiance of federal court decisions pulled the president into
the Meredith matter, even though he did not want to alienate an important
region or get backed into a corner by a demagogic governor as Eisenhower
had been. Above all, Kennedy wanted to avoid bloodshed between federal
troops and white Mississippians, which would revive bitter memories of
the Civil War and Reconstruction. To resolve the matter peacefully, the72 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Barnett, Ross (1898–
1987): Mississippi gov-
ernor who temporarily
blocked James Meredith
from entering the Univer-
sity of Mississippi.