Both before and since Meredith's enrollment, the Board stood firm before the vote-seeking bigots of the state who, fortunately, are more vocal than influential. In the summer of 1959 two members of this element, one a member of the legislature and the other a former legislator, drew up a series of "charges" against a dozen university professors for teaching alien and subversive ideas. The board conducted its own investigation, and issued a statement that the charges were completely false, and further expressed confidence in the administration of the university.
Only a few days ago, the Board demonstrated again that it has a mind of its own. With the state's racist politicians from Gov. Barnett on down screaming like stuck pigs, it voted eight to three to send Mississippi State's basketball team to compete in the integrated NCAA tournament.
Ole Miss today is leading the somewhat reluctant state of Mississippi through a period of transition. The rapid expansion of the transition. The rapid expansion of the School of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Engineering, Education, and Business is supplying the state's increasing needs, although many graduates of these school still leave the state.
The College of Liberal Arts and the School of Law, however, have discovered just how stubborn Mississippi inertia can be. It was towards the faculty in these two schools that the attacks of 1959 were directed, and it has been the professors of these schools who first began to "pick up the pieces" after the riots and educate the student body to the could facts of desegregation and the judicial process in America.
While the law school has generally stood firm against its attackers largely through the efforts of Dean Robert J. Farley, the social and political science faculties have experienced a relatively large turnover. In 1961, the Department of History lost four of its top six professors, though higher salaries at other schools also influenced their decision to leave Ole Miss.
The most glaring instance of outside political pressures on the university to discharge a faculty member is the case of William P. Murphy, the law school's constitutional law specialist, who consistently taught his students that Supreme Court decisions were the law of the land, including Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka.
Murphy was among those who came under attack in 1959 and was kept under fire largely through the efforts of one of his former students who now serves in the State Senate. During the 1961-62 school year he taught at the University of Missouri as a visiting professor, but returned to Ole Miss to teach in the 1962 summer session. But subsequently, he resigned to become a full professor at Missouri.
In spite of the harrassment and turnover in faculty, however, these departments have stubbornly continued to do their jobs. The very fact that the outside political pressures are if anything increasing is proof that the professors have not yielded. And the fact that since 1954, the year of the Brown decision, there has been a large element of dissenters among the student body is proof that the professors' efforts have not been in vain.
The Students
In the Campus Senate, the legislative branch of student government at Ole Miss, voices of protest are constantly being raised. Were it not for outside pressures, both from parents and indirectly from the political powers in the state (operating through the two Jackson newspapers which make sure that the name of every student who publicly speaks out against state policies is printed in such a manner that the student will get crank letters and his parents will be asked to explain to the home folk), these voices would often constitute a majority.
The campus newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, has generally been dominated by moderates and by the more intelligent members of the conservative element. Despite the fact that the editor is elected by the student body each year, there has not been a racist editor in more than a decade.
Except for the few months on either side of Meredith's enrollment in September, 1962, the majority of the students have been very antagonistic toward the Barnett element and its demogogic approach to the problems of the state. In the fall of 1960 Barnett was on the campus to crown the Homecoming Queen, and when he was announced to the crowd at halftime the boos from the student section were clearly heard over the applause elsewhere. In that same year, Barnett was invited to speak at a forum program, but after a few months of indecision, refused. During this time, a large group of students planned a demonstration and picket line outside the forum hall.
The popularity of Gov. Barnett among the students last fall (and, incidentally, the vast majority of his supporters among the student body were freshmen), was more a protest against the Kennedy Administration that support for Barnett. And this popularity has been waning rapidly in recent months, especially since the Governor has failed to specifically deny Look Magazine's allegations that throughout the week before Meredith's admission Barnett was negotiating with Robert Kennedy, to whom he wasn't exactly saying the same things he was to the people of Mississippi.
Before the Meredith incident, Ole Miss was a typical Southern university. While almost every student, some more reluctant than other, admitted that he was there to get an education, few confined that education to "book learning." The social life of the campus, created largely by the glamour and spectacle of big-time college football and a well-established fraternity system, was an integral part of the average student's definition of "education."
In recent years half of both the men and women students have been members of fraternities and sororities. The ratio between men and women at Ole Miss is 60-40. Though there are many exceptions to this rule, the Greeks usually have higher scholar tic average that the "independents," especially among the girls. Last June three students graduated with special distinction: all three were Greeks.
Close to 80 per cent of the campus leaders come from the ranks of the Greeks, and it has been four year since a non-Greek was chosen for the school's hall of Fame (six seniors chosen each year). Each of the school's last two Rhodes Scholar served as an officer in his fraternity.
Though this might imply that there is a certain measure of discrimination by the Greeks against the independents, this is generally not the case. The fraternities and sororities are much more stable in membership than the independents, many of whom never last over two or three semesters at Ole Miss. In fact, many of the independents (and, admittedly, some Greeks) would never get into Ole Miss were it not for the fact that the University has to accept practically. every graduate of a Mississippi high school.
Politically, the students have generally tended to be conservative though never quite to the extent that the vocal minority has represented them to be. Most students favor segregation, but few support discrimination (and the two can be separated). The majority supports a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, but few would advocate open defiance of court orders, especially after last fall's tragedy. Most students will express a concern at socialism being taught in the classroom, but few will support an effort to curb the free exchange of ideas among students and faculty.
Politics, in general, interests the upperclassmen much more than freshmen or sophomores. As a result the former group is far more aware of the fallacies of interposition and the other political maneuvers of the state to avoid integration. The freshman, however, are poorly informed, and it was from their ranks that most of the troublemakers came last fall.
Last fall the administration's foot-ting was very unsure and hesitant, but as the riots recede into the past and James Meredith drops into obscurity, Ole Miss is resuming its task of preparing its students to be better informed and more responsible citizens of their chosen communities