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I've been thinking about the story behind the plans for the new Confederate memorial site on the UM campus that will combine the statue with a glorified, corrupted cemetery. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/4351/the-past-isnt-dead-ums-winding-road-to-a-fight-over-a-statue-and-a-cemetery/
I've been thinking about the harm that student and alumni leaders like Don Barrett did to the University of Mississippi, in his time and since. About how they reinforced and reproduced white supremacist ideology long after UM technically integrated in 1962.
First, Barrett has not really been shy about his commitment to slowing change at UM. In 2017 the New York Times reported that he "called himself the representative of conservative alumni" in discussions about confederate and slavery related sites. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/us/ole-miss-confederacy.html
What does that mean? What do "conservative alumni" look back on with such fondness and dedication? We can get an idea from another interview Barrett gave to the NYT in November 1963.
Here's what Barrett, then a precocious first-year student, said about Meredith and how fellow white students stymied further integration at UM:
Here's how he talked about the future of integration in Mississippi more broadly:
Barrett went so far as to pledge his life to resisting social change:
His imagined solution was something like ethnic cleansing:
He rooted all of this in a reverence for the Confederacy:
With these views well-known, the university rewarded Barrett for his record: with a Carrier fellowship ("one of the most prestigious scholastic awards at Ole Miss") and making him editor-in-chief of the 1967 yearbook.
If you are wondering what message his yearbook conveyed, it was this (1967 Ole Miss, p. 22-23):
And captions like the one on the page for Barrett's fraternity, of which he was Vice President at the time (1967 Ole Miss, p. 276):
We don't have to imagine the impact this had on the Black students who followed Meredith to @OleMissRebels. We can listen to them explain it in their own words: https://southernstudies.olemiss.edu/mfa-student-produces-black-power-at-ole-miss-documentary/
When in 1970 Black students protested the university's continued support for white supremacy, nearly ninety of them--almost half of the Black student body at the time--were arrested and jailed, some at Parchman. Eight of those students were expelled. UM demanded obedience.
Their demands included the hiring of Black faculty, the formation of a Black studies program, more scholarships for Black students, and the elimination of Confederate symbols at official events, particularly the Confederate flag. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unhealed-wounds-of-a-mass-arrest-of-black-students-at-ole-miss-fifty-years-later
Most of those students did not return to campus until February 2020, when @garrett_felber organized an event to remember their activism and sacrifice and demand repair from the university. Some refused to return, their pain and anger too great. https://history.olemiss.edu/black-power-at-ole-miss/
Think about what was lost, for those students, and the students who followed them, and the students who avoided UM altogether. Think about what the University of Mississippi lost. Think about what the state of Mississippi lost.
While the university eagerly forgot this first generation of Black students, it surely remembered Don Barrett, who has never apologized, as far as I am aware, to the UM community for what he said and did in the 1960s.
In fact, UM put Barrett in its Hall of Fame, let him serve as a custodian of confederate memorabilia on campus, and wants to give him a new confederate memorial site at the cemetery. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/4105/um-cemetery-committee-operated-quietly-but-now-private-renovation-funds-paused/
Meanwhile, the Black students who organized peacefully in 1970 to dismantle the hostile, racist climate that students like Barrett defended were only recently acknowledged by the university, and only after it was forced to do so.
Linnie Liggins had enough credit to graduate when she was expelled in 1970 but did not receive her diploma until February 2020. Demands for reparations are ongoing, while the university does its best to spin out a public relations win: https://news.olemiss.edu/now-black-power-ole-miss-spotlights-historic-events/
But of course the Confederate symbols that Barrett has always held so dear continue to harm to this day. Black students, faculty, and staff have told us this time and again since 1970, especially in recent years. https://thedmonline.com/ole-miss-students-protest-silently-at-confederate-statue-during-black-history-month-march/
We can understand their disappointment when it was revealed that UM, which seemed ready to finally listen, was also still secretly serving the demands of Don Barrett and "conservative alumni" to perpetuate "Confederate heritage" on campus. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/3994/um-students-we-asked-for-the-relocation-of-the-statue-not-the-glorification-of-the-confederacy/
It was gross malpractice to put Don Barrett so close to the decisions over Confederate symbols. It is scandalous to allow him to drive through his pet project for the cemetery, which is a terrible project for a number of reasons--historical, moral, scientific, practical.
But what is most disastrous is UM's continued elevation of the dead-hand dreams of white supremacists who came of age in the 1960s over and above the courage and vision of our current generation of students and those who, hopefully, will follow them in the future.