[Marxism] Roll With Ross / A Mississippi Chronicle

[Greg Adler]

I found this remembrance by Hunter Gray to be very interesting.
I think that I have a memory of the desegregation of the University of
Missississipi.
I was only 11 at the time and living in Brisbane. I definitely have an
actual memory of the
ekection of Kennedy as president as it was discussed at my Catholic
school-then I was 9 and I have a very clear memory of the Cuban missile
crisis and my anxious viewing of the TV news thinking that we were close to
an atomic war.
But I am not sure if I actually remember the federally enforced admission of
Meredith from when it happened or from later representationsof it
amalgamated with vivid images of late struggles for civil rights.

I am sure, however, that the campaign on civil rights and the brutal
response it brought had a great effect on my politicisation.

I realised in reading Hunter's post that I did not know what had happened to
Meredith after his admission. I looked up this Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Meredith
 I hadn't realised that he had become quite conservative in later life-if
this is a reasonably correct article. But it was not a total surprise. No
matter what his individual political eveolution was the massive social
sruggle around civil rights had one of its important victories
in his admission and these victories and the struggles that led to them and
the brutal attempts to suppress them had resonance throughout the US and the
world.
Greg Adler
On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 9:21 AM, Hunter Gray
<hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org>wrote:

> Well, it's been almost 46 years to the Day -- the end of September, 1962.
>
> "Never Never Never Never Never Never Never Never
> We will not yield an inch of any field
> Fix us another toddy, ain't yielding to nobody
> Ross is standing like Gibraltar, he shall never falter
> Ask us what we say, it's to hell with Bobby K.
> Never let our emblem go
> From Colonel Reb to Old Black Joe"
>
>
> From, I Rolled with Ross: A Political Portrait, by Erle Johnston
> [I reviewed this book written by a key ally of then former Mississippi
> Governor, Ross R. Barnett [1960-1964] in the November 1981 issue of The
> Journal of Southern History.]
>
> Eldri and I well remember this defiance song which rang for weeks across
> Mississippi during the stormy buildup of resistance -- putting it mildly --
> to the eventual entrance into the University of Mississippi of very heavily
> protected [by Federals] James Meredith, first Black to crack the all-white
> Mississippi educational system.  We saw the growing mobs in Jackson in the
> days preceding the actual event. And the Sunday immediately before the
> entrance of Meredith to Ole Miss, we -- and Baby Maria -- were in downtown
> Jackson where thousands of armed white men were massed.  Racist bumper
> stickers were legion, especially one "Get The Castro Brothers Out Of The
> White House!"
>
> That night a full blown white riot erupted at the University. up at Oxford,
> well to the north of Jackson.  Hundreds of U.S. Marshals were attacked and
> it required what some historians later said were more U.S. Army troops
> [including Federalized National Guardsmen] than General Washington had ever
> commanded to restore even basic order.  Portions of the University were
> destroyed, hundreds injured, two persons killed.
>
> Meredith graduated in June '63.  Sixteen years later, I spoke [my oldest
> son, John, was with me] under the auspices of the Black Student Union at Ole
> Miss.  Although the good sized gathering was predominantly Black, many white
> students were present.  By that time, there were several hundred Black
> students at the Univer