On September 30, 1962, when President John Kennedy deployed the Mississippi National Guard and the U.S. Army to quell a lethal insurrection at the University of Mississippi, Nancy Pelosi was 22 years old, Bernie Sanders was 21, Joe Biden was 19, as was Connecticut Congresswoman Rose DeLauro.
All of them were old enough to remember Kennedy’s action, an action that has been celebrated in Democratic lore ever since. That said, I would bet my house to the reader’s mailbox that none of these well traveled Democrats has compared President Trump’s decision to President Kennedy’s and defended it accordingly.
Unlike Trump, Kennedy had no federal facility or agents to protect. His rationale for intervening in Mississippi was legitimate … but it was wildly unpopular in the State of Mississippi.
On Tuesday, the eccentric DeLauro, she of the blue hair, had the opportunity to do just that when she grilled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth before the House Appropriations Committee. Not surprisingly, she squandered her time, oddly with a pointless rant about ship building.
Rep. Pete Aguilar of California has two excuses for not knowing about the Mississippi insurrection of 1962. For one, he is not old enough, and for another he was educated in California public schools, many of whose students don’t even know about the Civil War.
In questioning Hegseth, Aguilar’s tone was respectful, at least by Democrat standards, but he proved as historically ignorant as his fellow panelists. In his smuggest moment, Aguilar quoted U.S. code to Hegseth as though he were delivering news.
Said Aguilar, “The orders of these purposes shall be issued through governors of the states.” Hegseth had already pointed out the reason why that section of the code was irrelevant. Said Heggseth, “The governor of California is unable to execute the laws of the United States.” Hegseth might have added “unwilling.”
In this regard Gov. Gavin Newsom resembles no one quite so much as the late Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett, who proved unable and unwilling to stem the impending riot at the state university in Oxford. Sparking the protest at Ole Miss was the planned admission of Air Force veteran James Meredith, the school’s first black student.
As Trump did with Newsom, Kennedy, and his Attorney General brother Robert attempted to reason with the governor by phone, but Barnett proved as oily and elusive as Newsom. Like the California governor, Barnett was afraid of his own base, and that fear translated, in each case, into fecklessness and empty showboating.
At a critical moment Barnett had the opportunity to prepare his citizens for the inevitable integration of the university, but he chose to do otherwise.
During halftime at a University of Mississippi football game on the day before Meredith’s arrival, Barnett addressed the crowd only to rile them up. Said Barnett, “I love Mississippi! I love her people! Our customs! I love and respect our heritage!” Sensing the danger ahead, Kennedy federalized the National Guard.
Meredith showed up on campus the day after Barnett’s war cry, September 30, 1962. He was escorted by two dozen U.S. Marshals and discreetly backed by several hundred federal law enforcement officers, including border patrol agents and prison guards. Few of these agents were in uniform and fewer still had any relevant training.
Unlike Trump, Kennedy had no federal facility or agents to protect. His rationale for intervening in Mississippi was legitimate — namely to honor a Supreme Court mandate — but it was wildly unpopular in the State of Mississippi. Local residents joined the students to express their outrage.
As the evening wore on, thousands of protestors gathered around the Lyceum, the administration building where the federal agents had gathered. As in Los Angeles, local authorities played to the mob. In Mississippi, they went even further, withdrawing the state and local police that had been keeping outsiders at bay. Said one state senator, a Barnett ally, “You have occupied this university, and now you can have it.”
Like Newsom, Barnett focused his theatrical rage not on the rioters but on the president, at every step challenging the president’s inarguable right to intervene. But unlike Newsom, Barnett had the courage of his convictions. He was only playing to one audience, and he was all in.
At 11 p.m. he declared, “We will never surrender!” Then all hell broke loose. Much like their Los Angeles heirs, these insurrectionists hurled rocks, Molotov cocktails, acid bottles and whatever came to hand. They flipped cars and burned them. Many of them came armed with guns and used them. Before the long night was through 160 federal agents would be injured, 28 of them by gunshot. Two civilians were killed as well, one a French journalist.
Running out of options, President Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 and ordered the U.S. Army to suppress the riot. Those interested in understanding this precedent should consult William Doyle’s excellent, eye-opening book, An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962. The unlikely heroes of Doyle’s book were the troops of the Mississippi National Guard.
These were good old boys who signed up for a mix of reasons unsuspecting that one day they would have to square off against their friends and neighbors. Many officials doubted they would show up when called. Fortunately for the university, the state, and the country they did. Had they not, it is likely the rioters would have overrun the Lyceum and possibly killed the federal agents within. The mood was that intense.
After some serious administration bungling, with Robert Kennedy in the predictable midst of it, the U.S. Army eventually arrived on the scene. Some 13,000 troops helped the Guard mop up. As Doyle relates, RFK was not a stickler on civil rights. He had Edwin Walker, a former major general who had been agitating on campus, seized off the streets without a hint of due process and committed to a federal prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation.
The not yet fully corrupted ACLU intervened on Walker’s behalf and had him sprung after five days. Walker returned to Dallas where, in April 1963, fledgling assassin Lee Harvey Oswald took a potshot at him and missed by inches. History is weird that way.
Weird too, at least from the Democrats’ perspective, was James Meredith’s path through life. After graduating from Ole Miss and getting a law degree at Columbia, Meredith involved himself in Republican politics, eventually serving as a domestic policy adviser to arch conservative Republican Senator Jesse Helms.
For his flouting of progressive stereotypes, the heroic Meredith has never received the accolades he deserves. In addition to his daring admission to Ole Miss, he later led a civil rights march and was shot for his troubles. Meredith is still alive today. If looking for a black person to interrogate about Trump’s intervention, MSNBC might give him a call.
READ MORE from Jack Cashill:
