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As I said last night, digesting the reporting from @DonnerKay + @middleton380 about how the plan to build a Confederate shrine at @OleMissRebels came together is gonna take a long time.
But the facts it uncovers are jaw dropping. Let's start a timeline. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/4351/the-past-isnt-dead-ums-winding-road-to-a-fight-over-a-statue-and-a-cemetery/
But the facts it uncovers are jaw dropping. Let's start a timeline. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/4351/the-past-isnt-dead-ums-winding-road-to-a-fight-over-a-statue-and-a-cemetery/
(It also inspired me to do a bit more googling around to find out more about Don Barrett, a man I served alongside on the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on History and Context back in 2016-2017.)
In 1960, Don Barrett burned a cross on Hazel Brannon Smith’s lawn. Smith was a white journalist. She was known for writing editorials and stories that put segregationists in a bad light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_Brannon_Smith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_Brannon_Smith
In 1963, he gave an *extraordinarily* detailed interview with a New York Times Magazine reporter, laying out his racist ideology in excruciating detail. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I_i51Ra0jyY10onD-KS3vNXDS5Jtwzj_/view
In 1967, as editor of the Ole Miss Yearbook, he made clear that his frat, @phidelt, longed for the days of “mint juleps, slaves, and dogs.”
Barrett says in MFP’s story that he later rejected these views: “What I said then was stupid, and frankly incompatible with my Christian faith, which I came to as an adult.”
When exactly this conversion took place is not clear.
When exactly this conversion took place is not clear.
In 1982, he worked to ensure the Methodist church didn’t provide aid to a Holmes County Black mayor, Eddie Carthan, who’d been accused of murder. (The mayor was later acquitted.)
He was quoted often in a very weird story in Christianity and Crisis from Oct. 18, 1982, p. 299-306.
He was quoted often in a very weird story in Christianity and Crisis from Oct. 18, 1982, p. 299-306.
More from Barrett in the article:
It is “absurd,” says Lexington attorney Don Barrett, “to say that Eddie Carthan can’t get a fair trial in Holmes County because of racism.”
"We’re too busy working together making a living to worry about race relations like you Yankees do.”
It is “absurd,” says Lexington attorney Don Barrett, “to say that Eddie Carthan can’t get a fair trial in Holmes County because of racism.”
"We’re too busy working together making a living to worry about race relations like you Yankees do.”
In the late 1980s, as he was fighting Big Tobacco, he seems to have really liked hanging out around the Confederate monument at the Holmes County Courthouse, so much so that when a book was written, in part, about his exploits, he chose to have his photo taken in front of it.
In the 1990s, he worked to get Confederate headstones put up in a cemetery in Holmes County.
As at @OleMissRebels, they didn’t know where exactly remains were located, so they just stuck up headstones with names on them wherever they wanted in what this site calls “a symbolic military manner.”
https://www.msholmes.org/cemetery/150/wesley-chapel-cemetery
https://www.msholmes.org/cemetery/150/wesley-chapel-cemetery
In 2003, he helped bankroll a film about the “University Greys,” the Confederate company consisting of University of Mississippi students.
(Honestly, I have no idea about the content, but one of the talking heads is Starke Miller, of Miller Civil War Tours fame. I’ve included a shot of Starke’s FB profile if you’re curious.)
In the 2010s, Barrett served on the board of Beauvoir, the home of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America.
In 2016, Chancellor Jeff Vitter put Barrett on the Chancellor Advisory Committee on History and Context, which was charged with contextualizing various sites on campus.
In this role, as MFP reports, Barrett threatened to file a minority report because he didn’t like how the rest of the committee approached the work. He privately appealed to Vitter, asking him for permission to push the headstone plan.
In 2018, Chancellor Jeff Vitter or Interim Chancellor Larry Sparks, made Barrett a co-chair of the Work Group for the Cemetery Headstone Project.
In this role, as MFP reports, Barrett implored @SenatorWicker to lean on the National Cemetery Administration to provide headstones even though @OleMissRebels didn’t have the required evidence.
In 2020, after the death of Barrett’s co-chair, John Neff, who had been adamantly opposed to the placement of new, inaccurate headstones in the campus Civil War cemetery, Chancellor Glenn Boyce appears to have turned the *entire* project over to Barrett. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/4105/um-cemetery-committee-operated-quietly-but-now-private-renovation-funds-paused/
This is a crazy story. I can’t emphasize that enough.
