Ten thousand students who could not make out the words being spoken from the lectern were simply today’s problem for Ed Walker to overcome. He roared into the microphone, but only the TV viewers and a few students immediately in front could hear what he was saying. Those immediately beside him could make out his call to resist federal movements to trample down on local authority, the greatness of the southern tradition of holding on to ideas, and the great Confederate standard of liberty above all—
“What the shit’s he saying?” the chancellor said, looking at the screen.
“Doesn’t much matter what he’s sayin’,” his aide said. “Those people out there, John, they’re not gonna listen to anybody.”
They certainly were not listening, two hours later, to the president of the United States. Speaking from the Oval Office, John Kennedy was telling the American people, “Our nation is founded on the principle that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty, and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny. Americans are free to disagree with the law, but not to disobey it.”
But things were out of control at Ole Miss.
Thirty thousand students and townspeople were in the streets protesting. There were stringy bands of people on the other side—supporters of civil rights, James Meredith, the Supreme Court, JFK—but they served primarily the purpose of augmenting the intensity of the majority. The turbulence grew, on campus and off campus. Nationalized state guardsmen were contending with billy clubs in what seemed a losing battle. Here and there shots were heard. One U.S. marshal was brought to a first-aid station, a shotgun blast in the neck. A nickelodeon repairman from Jackson was killed, shot in the head with a bullet designed for who-knew-whom. A correspondent for Agence France-Presse was found dead, a bullet fired at close range into his back. The protesters gave no quarter, rioting through the night in what Muriel Stetson, yielding now to NBC’s Chet Huntley in New York, had labeled “the most massive state/federal confrontation since the Civil War.” Sometime after midnight, army scouts from Jackson’s army base brought word that three thousand federal troops and four hundred more U.S. marshals would arrive on campus by midmorning.
In Washington, at the White House command center, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was on the phone to the marshals’ detachment at the Oxford airport. His voice was strong. “Tell you what, Marshal. Arrest General Walker.”
Bobby Kennedy looked up at his brother for approval.
The president said, “What’s his crime?”
“Inciting to riot.”
The president paused, then nodded his head.
The attorney general spoke on the phone again to the marshal. “We’ll get a court order. You’ll have it in hand by the time the troops get to him.”
It was shortly before dawn that General Walker was accosted by a single U.S. marshal. Two others had slipped behind him, and in an instant the general was manacled. The driver of the army transport standing by picked up the radio message and drove through the stragglers to where the general was held.
Walker was advised, in the transport, that he was charged with assault of, or opposing, federal officers; preventing a federal officer from discharging his duties; inciting or engaging in an insurrection against the United States; and conspiring to overthrow or oppose by force the execution of U.S. laws.
He was arraigned before a U.S. commissioner and bail was set at $100,000. He was driven then to the Oxford airport, which had been transformed into a brightly lit army base, placed in an army transport, and flown to Springfield, Missouri, where he was taken to the unit designated Federal Bureau of Prisons. There, pursuant to the order of District Judge Claude Clayton of Oxford, General Walker was informed that he would receive a psychiatric examination.
The federal troops arrived throughout the night and into the morning of October 1. They set up roadblocks, and by 11 A.M. they had quelled most of the rioting, arresting 150 protesters. Late that morning, James Meredith was escorted to class. Governor Barnett made a show of attempting to block his entry into the classroom building but was quietly turned to one side. General Walker watched that scene on television, through the bars of his cell.
21
IT HADN’T BEEN EASY for Woodroe in Oxford that night to move about and maintain any sense of direction. There was simply no way to make one’s way resolutely through the student mobs. Woodroe had quickly lost any idea of where General Walker was. He ducked into the student union, thinking to get a TV view of the local scene, but there were too many people crowded about the set and too much noise. Emerging, he decided to pursue a U.S. marshal platoon that appeared to be trying to work its way southbound across the Circle. There were six marshals. Their leader was talking on a radio held close to his ear. Perhaps the platoon leader knew where General Walker was and would lead Woodroe to him.
Moments later, the little column stopped, at the signal of its leader, who listened for instructions, radio to his ear. When the leader put the radio down, he noticed Woodroe standing by and called out, asking him what he was doing.
“I work for the John Birch Society in Dallas. They thought General Walker might need help.”
“You guessed right on that score. But we’re here about restoring order and we don’t need any out-of-towners on the campus. You’re staying where? Hilton? Well, get your ass back there. Go back that way, other side of the Lyceum.” He pointed. “Turn right and you’ll see a sign. And don’t let us catch you again on campus.”
Woodroe wondered whether it was wrong—dumb, maybe—to have told them he was with the John Birch Society. But then why the hell not? The Society was a perfectly legal body. On the other hand, it wouldn’t make sense to find himself in jail as a JBS rioter.
So he made his way toward his hotel. He’d be better off watching the scene on television in his room. It took forty minutes to make the fifteen-minute walk, but he got there, and found a security agent at the entrance, who satisfied himself that Woodroe was a guest of the hotel. Woodroe wouldn’t mind a beer, maybe two, take them up to his room. He stepped toward the bar. It was closed. Order of the police, they told him at the desk. “All bars are closed, citywide.”
In his room he turned on the television. For the next two hours the cameras took him to scenes of student rioting, of looters detected and sometimes arrested, of snatches of exhortations from speakers on both sides. He got the report of the dead French correspondent and the technician-repairman, but nothing about General Walker.
Sometime after three in the morning, Woodroe closed his eyes. He dreamt of an interrogation at which what he struggled to say was not being heard. The interrogator’s dream voice blended into the voice of a reporter broadcasting from Cape Canaveral. Woodroe woke with a start. Astronaut Walter Schirra was being prepared to attempt a six-cycle orbit around the earth, scheduled for October 3.
Woodroe was relieved that TV was carrying news other than from Oxford. But just then Barbara Walters was back on the subject. She said that General Walker had been arrested. That he was charged with inciting a riot and had been taken off to a federal prison. “There are a total of four charges filed against General Walker. He is a member of the John Birch Society, but it isn’t known if the general was in Oxford yesterday representing the Society. He made a statement to the press before his campus speech last night. It called for ‘violent vocal protest’ and charged that the order to integrate Ole Miss was ‘the conspiracy of the crucifixion by anti-Christ conspirators.’ Questions from a reporter didn’t elucidate exactly what the general meant by that. At last count, over 150 protesters have been jailed. There is still riotous action, though it has calmed down. In a matter of hours, the 2nd Infantry 2nd Battle Group will be in Oxford and also an armored cavalry regiment and federal forces of the 1st Infantry Regiment, from Fort Benning, Georgia, with 3,500 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division. There are roadblocks on the street and public transportation is suspended.”
Woodroe kept his eyes on the screen as other accounts came thr
ough, including, and this came as a surprise to him, a report that the United States was resuming its atmospheric nuclear test series in the Pacific. He shut off the television.
He had to decide what to do next. He had better call Helena. He grabbed his address book and got the operator: he wanted to place a call to Dallas.
“No long-distance telephone calls are going out.”
“Any idea for how long?”
“Sir, I don’t know whether things will ever be normal in Oxford.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. I’ve got to get out of here.
He was ready to use up his cash reserves. He would approach the desk.... No. Better one service echelon down. “Is room service operating?” he asked on the telephone.
Yes, what did he want?
“What have you got that’s ready?”
“Well, sir, we have juice and coffee and rolls and—”
“Bring that. Please. Is there a morning paper?”
“No, sir, no papers today.”
He shaved, showered, and dressed. He answered the knock on the door. The waiter was an elderly black man holding a tray.
“What’s your name?” Woodroe asked quietly as the waiter carried the tray to the table.
“My name is Henry.”
“Henry, I’ve got to get to Memphis and the buses aren’t running. If you know somebody could take me in a car, I’d be willing to pay fifty dollars.”
The old man hesitated before saying, “I’ll take you. But not until eleven. I go off duty at eleven.”
Woodroe would wait two hours.
It was twenty-six hours later that he finally arrived in Dallas. His first call was to Lee. He explained that he hadn’t been able to get through to her from Oxford, had spent a long night in a car, and now had urgent business in Dallas and would call her later in the day. He rang Helena and got through to her at home.
“I’m sure glad to hear from you, Woodroe. It’s terrible what they’ve done to General Walker.”
“I need to catch up. You coming to the office?”
“Yes, I sure am. I have a date there with the Dallas News reporter and with the AP reporter.”
“Have you gotten through to Bob Welch?”
“I did. I spoke with him last night. He said the right thing. We’ve got to raise unshirted hell about the way they treated the general.”
It was five days before General Walker was released from federal detention. Arrived in Dallas, he conferred with his lawyers, and they fanned out to seek reparations. Lawsuits were filed against the federal marshal who had arrested him, against the judge who had ordered a psychiatric examination, against the superintendent of the facility in Missouri who had kept him confined, against the doctor in Oxford who had affirmed the need for a psychiatric examination, against the Associated Press, which had broadcast news of his alleged psychological illness, and against newspapers in Memphis and New Orleans that had spoken of the general’s alleged illness.
Helena Crowder was cheered the next day by the telegram from Welch quoting the editorial in National Review. The magazine had been critical of the Society in past issues. This editorial should be given wide circulation in Dallas, Welch said. “Its summary is good and well put.” General Walker, the editorial read, had been in Oxford nonviolently protesting government action. “Whereupon (1) he was whisked off to a local judge, who (2) ordered him to submit to psychiatric treatment in a federal prison on the recommendation of a government psychiatrist who had not even seen General Walker; and thereupon (3) was spirited off to Missouri and detained on $100,000 bail; which bail (4) was refused, when it was finally raised, pending the completion of compulsory psychiatric examinations. If that is not a judicial horror story,” the editorial concluded, “we hope we never hear one.”
The editors, whose magazine had gone to press while Walker was still confined, ended with a broad reference to the famous telephone call by presidential contender John Kennedy to Mrs. Martin Luther King when her husband was jailed in Atlanta. “One can only hope that all civil libertarians in the United States will take on the General Walker case, and that President Kennedy will telephone his condolences to him in jail, that being his habit when people involved in racial entanglements are abused by local courts, proving that Mr. Kennedy is willing to intercede on behalf of the victimized, irrespective of race, color, or creed.”
Another week went by. The general’s primary lawyer, Robert Morris, who served also as president of the fledgling University of Dallas, a Catholic institution, stayed in close touch with Helena Crowder. He confided to her his recommendation that General Walker not give any speeches or hold any press conferences until after the post-Oxford scene settled down. He confessed a hope that, under pressure, the attorney general would drop the charges against Walker. “He could make up, a little, for the way he treated Ed in Oxford. I know Bobby Kennedy. He did work for Senator McCarran when I was first counsel for the Senate committee. And he did work also for Senator McCarthy. Bobby can be mean and determined, but he doesn’t like losing, and we’ve got enough due process objections on the Walker case to stop the prosecution dead, I mean stop it dead.”
On October 22, there was another speech by President Kennedy. He revealed that the Soviet Union had emplaced medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba and that he had ordered the United States Navy to block any Soviet ships heading for Cuba.
The blockade of Cuba was challenged by the U.S.S.R. the following morning. Premier Nikita Khrushchev warned that Soviet ships would not submit to search, and that U.S. aggression could lead to thermonuclear war.
Woodroe, breathless on hearing the TV report in his room, meditated on what appeared a nuclear deadlock. But how could this be? John Birch doctrine didn’t allow for a showdown—the Soviet Union was effectively in charge of U.S. responses, wasn’t it? How would Bob Welch analyze that development? Why wage nuclear war against a country already under Communist control? Meanwhile, the United States of America was under threat of nuclear devastation from missiles that could be launched from an island ninety miles away from the state of Florida.
In 1949 the Communists reached seven thousand miles to New Mexico to ferret out the secrets of the nuclear bomb; in 1962 they have thirty-eight nuclear missiles a rowboat’s ride away from the United States. Some foreign policy, Woodroe thought, a U.S. foreign policy that permits that to happen in thirteen years.
Unaccountably, his thoughts turned to Leonora. He could imagine almost anything in a nuclear age. But he couldn’t imagine life without Lee. He put in a call to her.
BOOK THREE
22
IT HAD BEEN ONLY THE ONE month in Texas, but it had been full, and Woodroe’s mind was grudgingly at work trying to assimilate everything that had happened. He was discomfited when, for his weekend visit to Salt Lake, he learned that his mother had arranged for him to be a guest at a meeting of the local John Birch Society. Inevitably he’d be asked to speak, and Woodroe wasn’t confident about how to frame his narrative. Ezra Taft Benson, a Mormon elder, had been a cabinet member with the Eisenhower administration and would probably be there—ironically, since Mr. Benson had to have read what Welch had written about Eisenhower in The Politician. The three-hundred-page book detailing reasons for believing Ike to be a Communist agent was not an official publication of the John Birch Society, but it had been widely circulated. It was not conceivable that Mr. Benson was unaware of it.
Mrs. Raynor was proud of the attention being paid to her son. He had had such a “harrowing” experience in Oxford with General Walker, “who really relied on Woodroe, you know,” she explained to Mrs. Chafee, at whose house the members would meet. It rather annoyed Mrs. Raynor that her daughter, Ellie, had said she did not want to go with them, much as she loved Woody. Woodroe didn’t find this out until time came to get out to the 6 P.M. meeting and he learned that his sister, a sophomore at the University of Salt Lake, wasn’t accompanying them to the car. He thought to ask her why, but stopped himself. Perhaps Ellie didn’t
want to have to answer questions, at college, about her brother and the John Birch Society. Woodroe was understanding, but sad. One more datum to reckon with in the swirl of things.
No alcohol in Mormonland. Woodroe had concealed from his mother his defection, but he had to acknowledge to himself that he missed the drink he’d have been offered almost anywhere else, at 6 P.M., before being called on to speak.
He spoke well, carefully avoiding any evaluation of General Walker’s deportment, in particular at his Oxford press conference. Woodroe spoke only about the abuse of the general’s civil liberties and the probable complicity of the attorney general. Asked his opinion of the conclusion of the missile crisis, he said only that he thought it unconscionable that the president should have assured the leader of the Soviet Union that the United States would never mount an invasion against the same Cuban leader who had harbored destructive missiles with which to threaten the United States. That criticism was met with applause, including by Ezra Benson, Mrs. Raynor noticed, recounting this proudly to Woodroe on their drive home.
That night, back in his bedroom, he read his book and waited until he knew his mother had gone up to bed. Ellie’s room was at the end of the hall, and she would probably not be coming down. Woodroe wanted to talk with Theo Romney and it wasn’t the kind of conversation he’d wish to share with others in the family, and there was only the one phone, in the living room.
It would be nearly midnight in Princeton, but Romney stayed up late and welcomed telephone calls well past midnight. “I just finished speaking with Frank Meyer,” he told Woodroe. “I’m doing a book review for him. Where are you?”
“Home. Salt Lake. I spoke to the JBS chapter on the Mississippi scene and on the missile crisis. Ezra Benson was there. I tried to call you from Oxford—”
Getting It Right Page 13