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The Kennedy Administration |
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John F. Kennedy succeeded Dwight D. Eisenhower to the presidency on January 20, 1961. The racial unrest that had characterized the Eisenhower years continued and increased.
In the fall of 1962 James Meredith, a black, sought to be admitted to the all-white University of Mississippi. Furious legal manipulations by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett and the Mississippi state legislature to keep Meredith out of "Ole Miss" resulted in Meredith's legal case being taken up by both the NAACP and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. As a result, when Meredith came on the Ole Miss campus the day before he was to register for classes, the case had been extremely well-publicized and Meredith was under the personal protection of United States marshals.
A large mob of white demonstrators gathered on the Ole Miss campus to protest Meredith's entrance. Time and again the mob assaulted the U.S. marshals as they stood guard in front of the building in which Meredith was to register the next day, pelting both the marshals and the building with eggs, rocks, and bottles. One marshal was severely wounded in the neck. A bystander was killed by a stray bullet, and a news correspondent was mysteriously shot to death at close range. Although snipers fired bullets repeatedly at the university building in which Meredith was to register, miraculously none of the U.S. marshals or Justice Department lawyers there were killed.
As the evening riot increased in intensity, President John F. Kennedywent on national television to explain why the court order admitting Meredith to the University of Mississippi had to be carried out. "Americans are free, in short, to disagree with the law," the president told the nation, "but not to disobey it." President Kennedy subsequently realized that Governor Barnett was not going to send adequate police or National Guard troops to relieve the beleaguered U.S. marshals at Ole Miss, so he "federalized" the Mississippi National Guard and dispatched 25,000 U.S. Army troops to the campus. After they arrived, Meredith was registered at the University of Mississippi without incident. Eight months later the U.S. marshals and the Justice Department lawyers would play much the same scene at the University of Alabama, only this time the confrontation would be with Alabama Governor George Wallace rather than a mob of segregationist rioters. In a well-publicized political speech, Wallace had pledged to the people of Alabama that he would "bar the school house door" rather than permit school integration in their state. Wallace stood in a doorway at the University as two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, sought to register for classes. The students were closely guarded by Justice Department officials and U.S. marshals. After reading a short speech condemning "the trend toward military dictatorship" in the United States, Wallace "stood aside" and permitted the students to register. Wallace did so, however, only after being ordered out of the doorway by the general in command of the Alabama National Guard. The Alabama Guard had been "federalized," and the orders to the general had come directly from President Kennedy.
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