Parting the Waters (115 page)

Doar, McShane, and Meredith flew back to Mississippi the next morning in the same Cessna, this time to Oxford. They arrived without troops or any other support force, as Robert Kennedy wished to avoid any appearance that the federal government required abnormal measures to obtain compliance with the law. When an escort of Mississippi highway patrolmen unexpectedly abandoned them near the campus gates, the three of them stepped forward alone to confront Lieutenant Governor Paul Johnson, who was backed by formidable rows of state troopers and sheriffs. This third standoff ended much like the others, except that Chief Marshal McShane, having heard through the telephone maze that the Mississippians might yield to a face-saving show of force, tried to push his way by. “Governor,” he told Johnson, “I think it's my duty to try to go through and get Mr. Meredith in there.”

“You are not going in,” Lieutenant Governor Johnson replied.

“I'm sorry, Governor, that I have to do this, but I'm going in,” said McShane. After a few physical rebuffs, he had to conclude that the rumors of capitulation were false. He and Doar sounded Meredith's third retreat, which pushed euphoria still higher in Mississippi.

 

King addressed the SCLC convention that night, defending the Albany Movement as a political success even though friend and foe alike were branding it a failure. Behind a merciful curtain of media disinterest, he spent most of his time planning a coordinated assault that would avoid the errors of Albany. With Shuttlesworth, he assembled special caucuses of the Alabama leaders. They scheduled a People-to-People recruitment tour early in the new year, plus a voter registration drive with VEP funds. The plan was to build toward a Christmas shopping boycott as the first stage of a planned confrontation “somewhere in Alabama.” King remained coy about the target city, knowing that the meetings were infiltrated. Also, he worried about attacking Birmingham as long as negotiations finally were producing results. On this point Shuttlesworth had no such doubts. “They took those signs down because you were coming to town,” he told King, “and they'll put 'em up again just as soon as you leave.”

 

With Governor Barnett vowing to scorn the Fifth Circuit's orders and the federal government threatening openly to back Meredith with soldiers, commentators compared the confrontation to the events preceding Little Rock or even Fort Sumter. Robert Kennedy took advantage of the pressure to bear down on Barnett in nearly continuous telephone negotiations. By their voices, two Americans scarcely could have sounded more foreign to each other. Kennedy spoke a high-pitched, nasal Bostonian, brimming with energy but often garbled by pauses and staccato asides. Barnett, in a low Mississippi drawl, fashioned sentences of cleaner syntax, masking his nerves behind homespun amiability. What united them was the fraternal belief that politicians weathered crises best by accommodating the interests of other politicians—by skirting public controversies to take care of each other. Accordingly, Kennedy never pressured Barnett with the prospect of jail or overwhelming military force. He did not vow to “convert the state of Mississippi into a frog pond,” as the Chicago
Tribune
threatened to do in 1865 when the legislature tried to impose onerous Black Codes on the newly freed slaves. Nor did Barnett swear to block the schoolhouse door or die the fire-breathing death of a Rebel martyr. Instead, Barnett focused on Kennedy's need to get Meredith into Ole Miss with the least possible public display of federal power, while Kennedy addressed Barnett's need to defend segregation as vigorously as any Mississippi rival might claim to have done.

Drifting inexorably into public relations, they fashioned an agreement to stage a fake showdown at the gates of the campus. Two dozen armed U.S. marshals would support Meredith, and Barnett, yielding reluctantly to superior force, would retire to the new task of getting Meredith out of Ole Miss. Ironically, this solution faltered when Kennedy's desire to appear accommodating did not quite satisfy Barnett's desire to look as though he was being pushed around.

“Hello, General,” said Barnett that afternoon. “I was under the impression that they were
all
going to pull their guns. This could be very embarrassing. We got a big crowd here, and if one pulls his gun and we all turn, it would be very embarrassing. Isn't it possible to have them all pull their guns?”

“I hate to have them all draw their guns,” Kennedy replied, “as I think it could create harsh feelings. Isn't it sufficient if I have one man draw his gun and the others keep their hands on their holsters?”

“They must all draw their guns,” Barnett insisted. “Then they should point their guns at us and then we could step aside.”

By late afternoon, as Doar and McShane were preparing to escort Meredith into Mississippi on his fourth attempt to register—traveling this time by car from Memphis—Barnett and Kennedy were still fashioning the scene. Barnett was afraid that Kennedy might let on that there was a deal, which would finish Barnett in Mississippi politics. Kennedy, having reduced Meredith's military support to a level that made Barnett uncomfortable, was assuring Barnett that he would portray their pretend showdown as a real one.

“You understand we have had no agreement,” said Barnett.

“That's correct,” Kennedy replied.

“I am just telling you—everybody thinks we're compromising,” said Barnett.

Kennedy assured Barnett there would be no appearance of a compromise. “I am just telling you that we are arriving and we are arriving with force,” he said.

Actually, they both knew that Meredith would be arriving with practically no federal force, and this aspect of the plan began to look less promising as ominous reports reached Kennedy about the size of the mob gathering in Oxford. Mississippi was caught up in a defiant holiday mood. Horns blared in the streets. Confederate flags flew. Radio stations, on emergency programming, filled the time between Ole Miss bulletins with recordings of “Dixie.” The FBI relayed stories of vigilantes converging from distant states with rifles and beer coolers, swearing to defend Mississippi. As Meredith's small caravan left Memphis, Kennedy feared that the federal escort, though small enough for him and large enough for Barnett, might be too small to handle a riot. He wanted Barnett's assurance that state authorities would protect Meredith once the marshals left the campus, but by then Barnett preferred to think of the state forces as weak and submissive. “After he gets in,” he told Kennedy, “you certainly don't expect us to guard him all the time….”

“Whatever is necessary, Governor,” said Kennedy. “Whatever is necessary to preserve law and order.”

“But, General,” protested Barnett, “I declare I don't think I could agree to guarantee the man after he gets in. When he gets in he is just one boy.”

“I had better call it off, Governor,” Kennedy said sharply, but he let the caravan proceed.

An hour later, after touring the crowded, gun-laden streets of Oxford, Barnett called Kennedy again. Fear stripped most of the artifice from his voice. “There are several thousand people here in cars, trucks,” he said. “…There is liable to be a hundred people killed here. It would ruin all of us. Please believe me…a lot of people are going to get killed. It would be embarrassing to me.”

“I don't know if it would be embarrassing,” Kennedy replied. “That would not be the feeling.” Barnett's bluntly selfish comment seemed to snap Kennedy out of his scriptwriter's perspective.

“It would be bad all over the nation,” Barnett said.

“I'll send them back,” said Kennedy. His order flashed from the Justice Department through military channels to a communications plane. From there it was beamed down to Doar in the Meredith caravan, which was hurtling down one of Mississippi's new interstate highways at nearly a hundred miles per hour. They pulled into a filling station in Batesville, Mississippi, just west of Oxford, so that Doar and McShane could call Robert Kennedy personally to confirm the retreat. To the stoically apprehensive Meredith, sitting in the car, Batesville seemed deserted—stripped of its population, who, from the sound of the radio reports, had motored ahead to join all of Mississippi in defending against him. He was relieved when they turned back toward Memphis.

Events raced at collision speed.
THOUSANDS SAID READY TO FIGHT FOR MISSISSIPPI
, announced the Jackson
Daily News
, which urged readers to learn a resistance song titled “Never, No Never.” Outside Mississippi, the news centered on the challenge to the Kennedy Administration. In the third set of triple-tier headlines that week,
The New York Times
blared:
U.S., TO AVERT VIOLENCE, CALLS OFF NEW EFFORT TO ENROLL MEREDITH; SENDS HUNDREDS MORE MARSHALS
. In New Orleans, on Friday, a Fifth Circuit panel tried Governor Barnett in absentia and found him guilty of contempt. Lieutenant Governor Johnson promptly received the same verdict. The three judges sentenced them to indefinite prison terms beginning on Tuesday, unless they purged themselves by securing Meredith's registration before then. Robert Kennedy, charged with executing this sentence, faced a new political dilemma. Barnett called Kennedy after lunch and secured a promise that no Negro marshals would be used on the next registration attempt.

Although days earlier Kennedy had branded Barnett a “loony,” citing a report that he had been struck on the head by an airplane propeller, and although he now saw Barnett's followers as mad, latter-day brownshirts, still he shrank from using force to support Meredith, because to do so would not only reveal an exhaustion of domestic authority but blot America's reputation in the world. His only alternative was to collaborate privately with Barnett to produce an inspired theatrical effect, worthy of Shakespeare. None but a genius could hope to orchestrate the desired illusion of normalcy and control, especially since Kennedy and Barnett simultaneously sounded public war trumpets that attracted hordes to overrun their stage. The threat of a jailed governor stimulated no new ideas for the script, and by five o'clock the Pentagon was flashing a DEFCON 3 alert to units from Texas to New Jersey: prepare to move within four hours.

 

King's convention was dull by comparison, as the three hundred SCLC delegates passed resolutions at a closing session late that Friday afternoon. One called upon the Justice Department to correct lapses in the protection of constitutional rights around Albany, Georgia. Another commended James Meredith for courage in seeking to enroll at Ole Miss. King, in the lolling drone of closing announcements, was reminding his audience of major SCLC events ahead—such as Mrs. William Kunstler's gala December fund-raiser in suburban New York, starring Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford—when one of the white men in the audience walked to the stage and lashed out with his right fist. The blow made a loud popping sound as it landed on King's left cheek. He staggered backward and spun half around.

The entire crowd observed in silent, addled awe. Some people thought King had been introducing the man as one of the white dignitaries so conspicuously welcome at Birmingham's first fully integrated convention. Others thought the attack might be a staged demonstration from the nonviolence workshops. But now the man was hitting King again, this time on the side of his face from behind, and twice more in the back. Shrieks and gasps went up from the crowd, which, as one delegate wrote, “surged for a moment as one person” toward the stage. People recalled feeling physically jolted by the force of the violence—from both the attack on King and the flash of hatred through the auditorium.

The assailant slowed rather than quickened the pace of his blows, expecting, as he said later, to be torn to pieces by the crowd. But he struck powerfully. After being knocked backward by one of the last blows, King turned to face him while dropping his hands. It was the look on his face that many would not forget. Septima Clark, who nursed many private complaints about the strutting ways of the SCLC preachers and would not have been shocked to see the unloosed rage of an exalted leader, marveled instead at King's transcendent calm. King dropped his hands “like a newborn baby,” she said, and from then on she never doubted that his nonviolence was more than the heat of his oratory or the result of his slow calculation. It was the response of his quickest instincts. This impression struck a number of others, including perhaps the assailant himself, who stared at King long enough for Wyatt Walker and some of the others to jump between them.

“Don't touch him!” cried King. “Don't touch him. We have to pray for him.” His words, signaling an end to the immediate crisis, released a flood of noise, some delegates loudly repeating King's instructions, others shrieking hatred at the attacker. Several preachers moved to enclose the assailant in a protective circle. Walker, Andrew Young, Bernard Lee, and Birmingham's Rev. Edwin Gardner consulted furtively about what to do. One of them jumped to the microphone to hold back the crowd, saying, “We can handle this on the stage.” Others, seeing that people were bolting outside with the news, gave orders that all the doors should be locked, fearing a lynch mob of Negroes or a second wave of attackers. King kept talking quietly to the white man, saying no one was going to hurt him, and the man said very little except to mumble that he believed in white supremacy and that Sammy Davis, Jr., was married to a white woman. As King and the preachers escorted him slowly offstage to a private office, a hastily organized quartet of singers moved to the microphone to hold the crowd, singing “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” and the somber slave spiritual “Steal Away to Jesus.” James Bevel interrupted to say this was no funeral—Dr. King was all right, and they had weathered a stern test of nonviolence. It was a joyful occasion, he declared, as he started them off in a rendition of “I'm on My Way to Freedom Land,” which gathered volume until the auditorium shook.