My three years of graduate study at the University of Mississippi began and ended with a racial incident—the riot that accompanied the enrollment of James Meredith in 1962 and the disturbance that occurred during the 1965 meeting of the Southern Literary Festival, hosted by Ole Miss. I’ve written about both events. Following is a brief summary of the second event. Photograph: Festival organizers discuss the crisis: me on the left, next to Warren.
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When I agreed to be Robert Penn Warren’s driver and escort for the Southern Literary Festival hosted by Ole Miss in 1965, I had no way of knowing I would be witness to a minor drama in the Civil Rights Movement.
It was only three years after the Meredith riot, and there were still only three black students enrolled in the university. But Evans Harrington, the Ole Miss professor who directed the Festival, despite opposition from some in the organization and even some of his superiors at the university, extended an invitation to predominantly-black Tougaloo College to participate in the Festival, the first time the Festival would be integrated. (I later published an essay about this Festival meeting which won a prize from the Mississippi Historical Society; and that essay became the catalyst for my biography of Harrington.)
When a Tougaloo group of three black students, two white students, and a white professor showed up for the Festival, a large number of Ole Miss students protested. They gathered outside the dorm where the visitors were housed, shouting their hate. They smashed the windows and slashed the tires of the Tougaloo vehicle and spray-painted the n-word in large letters on its side. The demonstration lasted well into the night.
The next morning the Tougaloo delegation decided, in the interest of safety, to withdraw from the Festival and return home. The president of their university came to Ole Miss to accompany his delegation back home; and a Mississippi Highway Patrol vehicle escorted the group on the 160-mile return trip to Jackson. Before they left, however, they called upon Warren and the other program presenters to join them and boycott the remainder of the Festival.
I watched Warren wrestle with the situation. He queried me and others about the incident; he worried over whether he should stay or go. I knew that earlier in his life Warren had been a “separate but equal” advocate. More recently he had become a supporter of integration. He truly was on the horns of a dilemma.
Finally, he decided to stay. He told reporters he didn’t think canceling the Festival would lead to any desirable end. What he said to me was a bit more succinct: “Dammit, I came here to deliver a speech, and I intend to deliver it.”
The speech he gave the next night in Fulton Chapel, to an all-white audience, was on Faulkner and race. He spoke of the “curse” and “doom” of Southern history, of Faulkner’s treatment of slavery and Jim Crow as “a rejection of the brother, the kinsman, the crime that is the final crime against nature and the human community.” For Faulkner, he concluded, “piety is not respect for institutions and social arrangements, but reverence for the human effort of justice.”
The talk was well received, and driving him back to the motel, I could tell he was pleased that so many had come forward afterward to thank him for his remarks.
I never saw Warren again after that week. But in the days that followed, as I read and re-read the text of his lecture, I realized he had not only taught us about Faulkner. He had also taught us by his personal example that sometimes it’s better to stay and speak than to walk away in protest.
Bob - i love these recollections and look forward each day to reading them; many thanks!
Amen to Warren, Faulkner and to you!!!