Memories of the Ole Miss riots remain vivid four decades later

The morning after the Ole Miss riots – 40 years ago this week when the first black student, James Meredith, had been officially, and forcibly, enrolled – my right eye was swollen half-shut, bruised, and black and blue.

Tear gas clouding the University of Mississippi campus like early morning fog stung both my eyes as I found my way to the dorm, wandering weightless, I recall, as if tracing my steps in an eerie dream. It was no dream, but it was a nightmare.

And it has been labeled, by author William Doyle, “The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 1962.”

Doyle’s book, “An American Insurrection,” published last year by Doubleday, relates “the true story of the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War and of a major turning point in American history.” For 318 pages, plus 65 more of source notes, bibliographies and index, Doyle leads readers through the turbulent days before Meredith tried to become the first black student to register at the University of Mississippi.

“Only to be physically blocked by radical segregationist Governor Ross Barnett, hundreds of state police and thousands of student and civilian ‘volunteers’ from across the South. The revolt climaxed in a 14-hour battle and the lightning invasion of the state by 30,000 combat troops ordered in by President John F. Kennedy,” states the book’s jacket.

The book itself is a riveting read, especially for those of us in the midst of that crisis, knowing so little of it at the moment of our youth – and understanding it even less in the many years since.

But I remember the chaos, the sound of sniper fire behind the Pharmacy Building, the brickbats hurled into streetlights, the cars overturned, the federal marshals, Brady Hall where I spent the night, the rumors – then the confirmation – of two deaths, the troops – local, county, state, federal – all wearing different uniforms. I remember peace criers and rabble-rousers, American flags, Confederate flags, curfews and phone calls from distraught parents.

I recall so few fellow students, only strangers, in that 14-hour period when thrust into the only battlefield, I pray, I ever will see. Darting around the Lyceum, the YMCA, the tall trees, the black streets, making my way to the journalism building, I hoped to find facts amid frenzy, find sanctuary from the insanity outside.

What happened 40 years ago this week changed us – not enough of us, to be sure, in our states and in our universities across this country – but we’ve traveled light-years, as William Doyle said about the University of Mississippi since 1962. It’s just that we have light-years ahead in our journey.

The black eye I received the night before the Ole Miss riots was caused by a half-full beer can thrown in the football stadium where 41,000 Mississippi-Kentucky fans converged in Jackson, Miss. There, we watched Gov. Barnett wave the flag of Dixie from his VIP seat before he marched, at halftime, across the field, to a standing ovation.

The fact was, my wound was not a battle scar at all. The other ones took longer to heal.