Battle of Ole Miss 73administration kept a low profile, as it had during the Freedom Ride in
Alabama. White House officials conferred with senator James Eastland, uni-
versity professors, and business leaders to lobby Ole Miss trustees to admit
Meredith. Secret telephone negotiations with the governor became the
centerpiece of the administration’s behind-the-doors campaign. That strategy
proved fruitless. Counting on his powers of persuasion, the attorney general
called the slippery governor twenty times to find a way out of the dilemma.
No compromise was possible, the governor observed, for the bottom line was
‘whether Mississippi can run its institutions or the federal government is
going to run things.’ Martin Luther King found this deal-making disturbing,
for it ‘made Negroes feel like pawns in a white man’s political game.’ He real-
ized sadly that president Kennedy and governor Barnett were closer to each
other than the president was to him.
The campaign against James Meredith escalated on 20 September, the
beginning of registration at the University of Mississippi. At midnight, klans-
men burned a gigantic cross between two dormitories. Hours later, state
legislators rammed through a bill denying university admission to anyone
guilty of ‘moral turpitude’ or any criminal offense. It was a law written only
for Meredith. Later that day, when Meredith was sentenced in absentiato a
year in jail for voter fraud, he was ineligible for Ole Miss. Meredith defied
state officials and went to the campus with chief federal marshal James
McShane, a tough former New York cop. As the unflappable Meredith faced
thousands of students cursing and pelting his car with rocks, he thought,
‘What a terrible waste of time and money and energy to iron out some rough
spots in our civilization.’
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals threatened the university trustees
with contempt for denying Meredith’s registration. The trustees relented, and
federal lawyers obtained a court order that forbade the governor from block-
ing Meredith’s registration. But when Meredith arrived at the Woolfolk State
Office Building in Jackson, Barnett stood in the doorway and read another
proclamation of interposition denying him admission ‘now and forevermore.’
A state senator praised the governor’s stand as ‘the most brilliant piece of
statesmanship ever displayed in Mississippi.’ That night, the appeals court
found Barnett guilty of civil contempt and ordered him to register Meredith
within a week or face arrest and a staggering fine of $10,000 per day.
To avoid bankruptcy while protecting his reputation among businessmen
who feared a catastrophe, Barnett proposed several deals with the Kennedys.
Barnett would allow Meredith to register at Ole Miss if the federal marshals
pulled their guns against the state police, a charade that would demonstrate
that Mississippi had to surrender to superior force. The bizarre arrangement
fell through when Barnett called the attorney general with the frightening
news that wild-eyed vigilantes were prowling Oxford’s streets, ready to