7/21/2015 ESPN.com - ETICKET - OTL: Ghosts of Mississippi ESPN.com: OTL: Ghosts of Mississippi OTL: Ghosts of Mississippi hen I was 5 or 6, because of my dad's political activism in the Mississippi Delta, local white supremacists burned a cross in our front yard. My parents had a decision to make: Wake me up or let me sleep. They chose sleep. On that night, hate and fear would not be passed to another generation. Wright Thompson discusses the integration of the University of Mississippi with Bob Ley on "Outside the Lines." In the years that followed, my parents raised my brother and me to leave old prejudices behind. They enforced strict rules that made our home something of an oasis. Respect all people. Understand other points of view. And, of course, no N­word, ever, under any circumstance. That certainly made our house different from many in town. My dad ran the local Democratic Party, so I grew up around whites and blacks, which also made me different from many of my friends. Still, there were things never discussed. We never really talked much about the civil rights era, about things my parents had seen. The South during the '60s was like that cross in our front yard: something they experienced but wanted to shield their children from. Once I grew up and moved away, I began to study the history of the South. The 1962 Ole Miss football team fascinated me. That year, perhaps because of the school's near self­destruction over integration, or perhaps in spite of it, the team managed the most remarkable season seen in Oxford before or since. The star quarterback, Glynn Griffing, was born near my family's farm, which his uncle managed, and my dad idolized him growing up, wearing No. 15 as a high school quarterback to be just like Glynn. It was the team that made my dad love football. It was also a team not discussed much, just a quick story here and there. They seemed forgotten, their legend small despite big accomplishments, and I wanted to find out why. A few months back, I dove into the Ole Miss library's special collection, containing records and artifacts from the 1962 riots. Each page changed the way I looked at the place around me, the way I looked at the places inside myself where I love my state and its traditions. Why hadn't I been taught any of this in school? I'd had an entire Mississippi history class in junior high. We talked mostly about Indians. More recently, my aggravation had been stoked by ignorant election e­ mails from my great­uncle in Jackson, ones that seemed to be from a time long past. I came upon a box containing two small notebooks used by the soldier tasked with guarding James Meredith, the first African­American student at Ole Miss. They were Nifty brand, cost a dime and were filled with descriptions of suspicious characters, of license plate numbers and names. I flipped through the pages ... until a familiar name stopped me cold. My great­uncle, the e­mailer's brother. Last name: Wright. Two questions went through my mind: What is the cost of knowing our past? ... And what is the cost of not? CHAPTER ONE: THE BATTLE 1. Sept. 25, 1962 Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy places a phone call to Ross Barnett, the segregationist governor of Mississippi. They've been talking for weeks now. Every day, it's a different story. Mississippi politicos joke that whoever gets to Barnett last wins the argument. Kennedy is finding this out firsthand. Federal courts have ordered Ole Miss to admit Meredith. Barnett is resisting. A bumbling and unpopular politician ­­ he'd been booed at Ole Miss games ­­ he is now soaking in some newfound adulation for standing down the Kennedy brothers. It is a drug, and Barnett's hooked. "We have been part of the United States," he tells Kennedy, "but I don't know whether we are or not." There is silence on the phone. Kennedy doesn't know what to say, really. It's 1962. And Mississippi is threatening to secede? "Are you getting out of the union?" he finally asks. http://espn.go.com/espn/print?id=3897398&type=story 1/19 7/21/2015 ESPN.com - ETICKET - OTL: Ghosts of Mississippi 2. Sept. 29, 1962 The players can hear the noise. They cannot see anything but the locker room walls inside Mississippi Memorial Stadium in Jackson, but they can hear the noise. It's halftime, and Ole Miss is beating overmatched Kentucky, though just barely, 7­0. What's worse, the Rebels have been uncharacteristically sloppy. Early in the game, bruising fullback Buck Randall, considered by many the baddest S.O.B. on campus, has a touchdown called back because of a penalty. This is not like a team coached by John Vaught, who runs his squad like a corporation. All business, no rah­rah speeches. The critics love to pick on Vaught for his soft schedules, his inability to win a big game, the fact that his team couldn't tackle LSU's Billy Cannon three years earlier with a national title on the line, but nobody ever faults his discipline. The scene in the stands above the locker room is alive with color, a circus of motion, most of the 41,000 spectators furiously waving Confederate battle flags. The band marches onto the field in Confederate battle flag uniforms, carrying the world's largest Confederate battle flag. The band plays "Dixie." The crowd sings along, waves those flags, cheers. There are no black fans in the stadium and, on nights like these, it's easy to forget the South lost the war. In some ways, that's precisely the point. A young politician named William Winter looks around and feels like a stranger. How can this be happening? The crowd shakes with indignation, the air filling with Rebel yells, from the mouths of doctors and bankers and lawyers and priests, and Winter thinks: So this must be what a Nazi rally felt like. The crowd screams for Barnett to speak. Unbeknownst to them, hours earlier, he'd made a secret deal with the Kennedys to have Meredith enrolled. But, once again, he's on the verge of changing his mind. He has been so hated and now is so loved. He can't help himself: The enthusiasm of the crowd is taking him out to sea. A microphone appears at midfield. A single spotlight swings across the field until it illuminates the governor. Barnett walks to the microphone. The crowd falls silent. He raises his right fist. "I loooooove Mississippi!" he yells. The crowd roars. Even the moderates in the crowd feel chills. The flag waving grows frantic. One hundred and one years earlier, all but four students at Ole Miss dropped out of school to form Company A of the 11th Mississippi Infantry. The University Greys. On July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg, the unit rose from safety and made a futile rush from Seminary Ridge. Everyone was killed or injured, and history named their suicide mission Pickett's Charge. The school's sports teams would be called Rebels to honor their sacrifice. The young men and women in the stands today are just three generations removed from those soldiers. One of them, senior Curtis Wilkie, received a letter from his mother before the game. She anticipated what the young man might be feeling: Son, Your great­grandfather Gilmer set out to fight the federals from Ole Miss with the University Greys, called the Lamar Rifles, nearly a hundred years ago. He didn't accomplish a thing! See that you don't get involved!!! Winter grew up listening to his grandfather tell about riding with the Confederate Army. The male students especially, who've grown up with similar stories, feel something move deep inside themselves. Later, most will deny it. But tonight, the emotions are real, and in case anyone misses the connection, the next morning's paper will devote two pages to Robert E. Lee's march north. Barnett looks out at them and feels the emotions, too. "I looooooove her people!" The roar gets louder. "I loooooove her customs!" The yelling and screaming drowns him out, and Barnett doesn't say another word. He doesn't have to. He stands at midfield, soaking up the love and adulation, a wide grin spread across his face. 3. The pride before the fall Mississippi in the fall of 1962 is a doomed civilization at its apogee. Enrollment at Ole Miss stands at an all­time high. The football team has been to five consecutive bowl games, won three SEC championships in the past decade, and gone 27­ 2­1 in the past three years. In 1959 and 1960, Ole Miss coeds won back­to­back Miss America crowns. Pageant moms around the country send their daughters to Oxford, an invasion of leggy blondes whose influence can still be seen in the state's gene pool. Of course, that's just half of the story. To be an African­American in this world isn't much different than it was in 1861, and the Mississippi of 1962 has been forming in earnest for 14 years, with segregation becoming more and more http://espn.go.com/espn/print?id=3897398&type=story 2/19 7/21/2015 ESPN.com - ETICKET - OTL: Ghosts of Mississippi formalized. In 1948, President Harry Truman signed the first civil rights legislation. That year, something new popped up at Ole Miss football games: Confederate battle flags.