The States: The Edge of Violence

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By blocking Meredith's entry in open defiance of a court order expressly enjoining him from interfering, Barnett chose a collision course. Such conflicts are rare, if only because it is so obvious that in a showdown of force the Federal Government will prevail. Except for three Confederate Governors arrested after the Civil War, only one incumbent state Governor—Warren Terry McCray of Indiana, in 1924—has ever been sentenced to imprisonment under federal law, and he was convicted of misuse of the mails, a felony that had nothing to do with a conflict of federal and state powers. No state Governor has ever been sentenced for contempt of a federal court. Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus made an ugly mess in Little Rock in 1957, but he did not defy any specific federal court order directed at him, and as soon as the Federal Government intervened with force he scuttled off to the sidelines.

Barnett's overt defiance confronted President Kennedy with a grim dilemma. He could not let Barnett get away with persisting in his defiance; that would invite defiance all over the South, subverting not only the Negroes' progress toward justice but the entire federal system. But the use of federal force against a state also damages the federal system. And as practical Democrats, John and Robert Kennedy had to reflect upon the prospect that military intervention in Mississippi might be politically disastrous for the Democratic Party in the South.

The Pullback. In straining to avoid violence, the Administration appeared weak and hesitant. It had tried three times to get Meredith registered; it had failed three times. Now it set out on a fourth attempt, and Attorney General Kennedy upped the escorting force level to two dozen marshals. Late in the week they set out in a motor caravan from the U.S. naval air station at Memphis, Tenn., 80 miles from Oxford. But Barnett, meanwhile, had also mustered stronger forces.

Some 200 state policemen with steel helmets, gas masks and clubs were deployed around the university campus. A hefty force of sheriffs, deputies and policemen waited at the railroad bridge separating the campus from the town. Even more dangerous-looking were the uninvited strangers who had swarmed in from the backlands, eager to join in a fight. After looking over all those swinging clubs and restless fists, a Justice Department observer in Oxford telephoned Bobby Kennedy in Washington and warned him that the oncoming force of marshals was obviously insufficient to force its way without a fierce battle. "I'll call it off," said Bobby. He signaled an aide, who telephoned the Justice Department's Oxford command post, which in turn radioed instructions to the oncoming caravan: go back to Memphis. The cars were then 20 miles from Oxford.

The decision to pull back was sensible, but it looked embarrassingly like a retreat. Attorney General Kennedy tried to make it clear that the retreat was only temporary. The Justice Department announced that the marshals had been recalled to avert "major violence and bloodshed." Bobby himself issued a statement declaring that "the orders of the federal courts can and will be enforced."