Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa

4. The President’s Problem: February 6, 1956

chapter 4 The President’s Problem Feb­ru­ary 6, 1956 Unless we can maintain law and order on the campus, we might as well close shop. Directly following Monday’s near disastrous demonstration, an all but defeated President O. C. Carmichael addressed the faculty, informing them, “un­ less we can maintain law and order on the campus, we might as well close shop.” Present at the meeting was librarian Joyce Lamont, who recalled the presi­ dent’s calls for calm. “He told us things were dangerous and we needed to be careful. Careful about what we said to each other . . . because we didn’t want any more riots or the university to be torn up in any way whatsoever.” The mob’s most recent actions had shaken Carmichael to the core, making himwhollyuncertainoftheuniversity’sfuture.“Thequestionnowiswhether an anarchy will prevail or law and order,” paraphrased the Tuscaloosa News, though Carmichael himself had no answer. Despite the president’s dismal assessment, the university still had a few influential players in its corner, in­clud­ing the charismatic Student Government The President’s Problem 35 Association president, Walter Flowers Jr., who was fully credited for his previous weekend’s pub­lic efforts at maintaining peace. “We owe a great deal to Walter Flowers Jr. for addressing the crowd and trying to persuade them to return home,” Dean Corson informed the faculty. “Flowers showed a great deal of intestinal fortitude.” Yet even with the student leader’s support, by Monday afternoon the university had already endured three full-­ fledged demonstrations, and in the estimation of Dean Corson, each had been worse than the last. “Friday’s was ugly, Saturday’s three times worse, and no comparison in the one held yesterday,” Corson admitted the day following Monday’s assault. The violence was attributed to outside influences, proof of which was observed by the weekend’s influx of out-­of-­town license plates—cars coming in from Birmingham and beyond. In an effort to preserve the university’s good name, on Monday afternoon PresidentCarmichaelechoedBennettandHealy’spreviousmisgivings,releasing a statement in which he, too, charged the recent uptick in lawlessness to nonstudent influences. “Elements from the outside not only participated in the cross burnings on the campus,” he explained, “but also in the crowds that have invaded the campus.” Carmichael’s statement was his first pub­lic shot aimed at his detractors. In the course of four days he had continually amped up his rhetoric, eventually going so far as to compare the mobs to an invasion—a carefully selected word to reflect his conviction that outsiders, and not students, were to blame. Next he rallied his base, reminding dissenters that the university’s students and faculty were no longer alone in the fight but had launched a successful effort to band together with local civic leaders who promised support in restoring “law and order in the community.” In slightly veiled language, Carmichael appeared to be drawing a line in the sand: If the mobs chose to continue their lawless demonstrations, they would no longer have the implicit support of the community. “With all these forces dedicated to the task,” Carmichael affirmed, “I have a reasonable hope that order will shortly be restored.” % On Monday night, as the crowd returned to the President’s Mansion once more, they were met on the portico by Mrs. Carmichael—a short-­ haired, 36 The Mobs frail-­looking woman, timid in her attempt to speak to the crowd on her husband ’s behalf. Just minutes prior, the president’s wife, along with Dean Healy and uni­ versity police chief Allan O. Rayfield, had been sitting quietly inside the mansion , though Healy reported that the silence was soon interrupted by “the rattle of stones as they were being thrown at the front of the house.” Rayfield and Mrs. Carmichael stepped cautiously outside, yet when the president’s wife attempted to address the crowd that, by some estimates, had grown to nearly six hundred, her voice was drowned out by their shouts. Trying a new tact, Mrs. Carmichael relayed her message through Chief Rayfield, who belted the words out to the crowd. Aftermuchshouting,themessagewasfinallymadeclear:PresidentCarmichael was not home. In fact—and unbeknownst to the crowd—that very moment he was at a meeting in downtown’s McLester Hotel, where the university ’s board of trustees had gathered to find a way to thread a perilously thin needle: returning the campus...