defend the state’s color line. After Robert Kennedy failed four times to regis-
ter Meredith, the president tried to clean up the ‘God-damn mess’ by calling
the ‘loony’ governor himself. ‘I don’t know Mr Meredith,’ the president
began, ‘but...under the Constitution I have to carry out the orders of the
Court....I would like to get your help doing it.’ The governor finally prom-
ised to preserve order on campus ‘as best we can,’ thereby avoiding jail. Just
to hedge their bets, the president, secretary of the Army, and chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff met in the war room of the White House to pore over
maps of Mississippi.
As the battle became imminent, the governor again stirred the pot of
racism. On Saturday night, 29 September, Barnett appeared at an Ole
Miss football game where 41,000 fans waved Confederate flags during the
national anthem and chanted ‘We want Ross!’ At the fifty-yard line, Barnett
raised a clenched fist in defiance and roared over loudspeakers to the ador-
ing crowd: ‘I love Mississippi! I love her people! Our customs! And I love and
respect our heritage!’ The crowd responded with a defiant song:Never, Never, Never, Never, No-o-o Never, Never, Never
We will not yield an inch of any field,
Fix us another toddy, ain’t yieldin’ to no-body,
Ross’s standin’ like Gibraltar, he shall never falter,
Ask us what we say, it’s to hell with Bobby K,
Never shall our emblem go from Colonel Reb to Old Black Joe.In this ugly, Nazi-like scene, segregationists announced their readiness to die
for white supremacy.
As the day for Meredith’s registration approached again, white defiance
deepened. Radio stations played ‘Dixie’ to rouse resistance. When word
spread of plans to arrest Barnett, thousands of whites surrounded the gov-
ernor’s mansion. Outside the state, former major general Edwin Walker from
Dallas, Texas, called for an insurrection of 10,000 armed volunteers ‘to rally
to the cause of freedom’ in Oxford. Five years earlier, Walker had overseen
the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock. Since then, he was
dismissed from the army for indoctrinating troops with right-wing literature
from the John Birch Society. Walker’s appeal led many troublemakers from
across the South to Ole Miss. Sporting greasy, ducktail haircuts, these toughs
brought along high-powered rifles, shotguns, and squirrel guns. Recognizing
serious trouble was in the offing, Mississippi’s congressional delegation
telegraphed an ominous warning to president Kennedy: ‘A HOLOCAUST IS
IN THE MAKING.’
At last, the White House discovered a weak point in the governor’s façade.
When the governor kept stonewalling, Robert Kennedy told a petrified74 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT