News - Politics

Sunday, Sep. 21, 2008

MISSISSIPPI'S ROAD TO RECONCILIATION: OXFORD 1962

OXFORD -- Decades after a deadly riot over integration at Ole Miss marred the state's reputation, Mississippi has another opportunity in the worldwide media spotlight this week.

An expected 3,000 journalists are coming to the Oxford campus for the first presidential debate of 2008, which is to be held Friday night. It's a milestone for the school, especially for many who were on campus during James Meredith's fight to become the school's first black student in the fall of 1962.

That Sunday night 46 years ago, airwaves transmitted news around the world that armed rioters had killed two men - one a foreign journalist, the other an Oxford repairman. But George "Buck" Randall, a running back on the Ole Miss football team that went undefeated and untied that year, was driving up from his hometown of Greenwood for the week of classes. He arrived on campus having missed news reports.

Curious about what was happening, Randall ventured into the action. The university police chief pulled him inside the Lyceum building, where the U.S. Marshals were based, shielding him from gunfire. Not long after, Randall saw a marshal shot nearby as bullets came through the window. In the chaos, Chief Marshal Jim McShane ordered Randall, a well-known athlete, to go out and tell the mob that troops were about to return fire if rioting didn't cease.

"It was a war, really," Randall said.

Unfazed by bullets flying across campus, Randall talked to rioters, many of whom he said didn't appear to be students. Some listened, others shrugged him off or got belligerent, but Randall stood his ground. A national sports magazine wrote a story about Randall's actions, which prompted nasty letters to the athlete from his hometown. But 46 years later, he says he has no regrets.

"I didn't want anybody to get killed," Randall said. "It was a bad situation back then."

Although a monument in the heart of the campus now celebrates him as a hero, Air Force veteran Meredeth had much to fear in the 1960s. In 1966, after he had graduated from Ole Miss, Meredith was shot on the side of U.S. 51 near Hernando during a civil rights march. He recovered.

In a speech at an Ole Miss football game in Jackson on the night before the riots, then Gov. Ross Barnett, the 10th son of a Confederate veteran, whipped thousands of Rebel flag-waving spectators into a frenzy. Just a few days before, Barnett, acting as registrar, had blocked Meredith's attempt to enroll, even though the federal courts had ruled that the university must admit him. Meredith arrived again with U.S. Marshals and federal officials at his side on Sunday, Sept. 30, 1962.