McCOMB - It's interesting how insignificant details connected to a major event can be recalled more vividly than the event itself.
Maybe there's a lesson to be learned from some of what we old-time newspaper people used to called "sidebars," which are separate stories complementing the main one.
Reading recent articles about the University of Mississippi commemorating the 40th anniversary of racial desegregation at the institution, my mind's eye flashed back to the Saturday night and Sunday morning preceding the rioting that accompanied James Meredith's forced admission to the previously all-white institution.
(Actually, as I recall, there was a brown-skinned student at Ole Miss when I was there during the 1950s - from India I think - but he stayed in the YMCA, not a dormitory. Meredith, himself, now claims he's 80 percent Choctaw Indian, but he certainly wasn't called an Indian by the white racists in 1962, nor was he called an African-American. Officially, he was then and now the first black to attend Ole Miss. But I digress from my sidebar.)
I was living in Hattiesburg at the time, working on the Hattiesburg American. The year before, my young family and I had lived in a West Jackson neighborhood with other young couples with whom we had formed friendships.
My wife and I had planned for several weeks to leave the children with their grandparents and visit those friends on the weekend of Sept. 29, at the same time taking in the Ole Miss-Kentucky game, which was scheduled in Jackson that night.
The showdown between the federal government and Meredith on the one side and Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett and most Mississippi officials on the other had been brewing for weeks with various legal maneuvers, court orders and negotiations being reported daily.
At the same time, President John F. Kennedy and his advisers, while dealing with the desegregation issue, also were faced with events leading up to what is now known as the Cuban missile crisis.
Despite all the alarming news and war clouds both at home and abroad, we aimed to have a good time that weekend, and I guess we did.
The Ole Miss football team, in the heyday of the Johnny Vaught era, was ranked No. 7 in the nation by the Associated Press and was facing Kentucky in a Southeastern Conference opener at Jackson's new 46,000-capacity stadium.
I don't remember the score or any details of the game.
What I do vividly recall is Gov. Barnett arriving after the kickoff and being cheered as he took his seat.
Then he made a speech at halftime, during which he proclaimed he loved Mississippi, her customs and her traditions. At every juncture he was wildly cheered and applauded.
It reminded me then, and still does, of newsreel film of Hitler making speeches to cheering masses in Germany in the 1930s.
This isn't to equate Barnett with Hitler or Mississippi with Germany, but the response of the masses to every phrase of a fiery speech was certainly reminiscent.
The next day, Sunday, we were sitting in lawn chairs with friends outside one of their homes, enjoying the fall weather.
An excited man from down the street suddenly drove up and said word was out that federal marshals were going to the Governor's Mansion to arrest Barnett. He was spreading the word that "we're going down and circle the Mansion and stop them."
My friends and I, though not the most forward-thinkers in America, at least had the good sense not to join them in what proved to be a false alarm or to gather with those in Oxford later that evening in what turned out to be one of the sad nights in Mississippi history.
The lesson here is an old one that repeatedly has been demonstrated down through history, including at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The masses, stirred by misguided even if perhaps well-intentioned leaders, can be so wrong that it's frightening. Sometimes popular opinion is right, but it can be wrong. That's why we should always be tolerant of differing opinions - which wasn't the case in Mississippi in 1962.
