Mississippi: The Closed Society

6. The Voices of Dissent and the Future of the Closed Society

6. The Voices of Dissent and the Future of the Closed Society "It Was Just a Matter of an Oath I Took" The closed society is never absolutely closed. There always have been and there always will be dissenters, doubters who will point to the road not taken. They are the hope of the present and the future, and even when they are wrong,their presence is required if the social order is to avoid intellectual stagnation and to escape the excessive belligerence of totalitarianism. A chronic weakness of democracy is the lack of assurance that the majority can come up, at any one time, with the right answers, or with answers sufficiently right to ensure the continuance of democracy. The majority in Mississippi was wrong in 1861, and the minority—perhaps thirty per cent—was right. The majority has been wrong many times since. This has been due in part to ignorance, lack of good leadership, and also to the exclusion of the non-conformist. Fx»r Mississippi to make correct decisions , it must hay_e an enlightened electorate and a leadership intelligent enough to summon that enlightenment tn save, the state. For more than a century neither of these grounds for correct decision has been present in Mississippi, because freedom of inquiry and expression have not been tolerated. Criticism of the reigning orthodoxy has resulted in expulsion of the critic and the imposition of the smothering hand of conformity on the society. As long as this remains true, Mississippi 141 142 Mississippi: The Closed Society will be left in her mental poverty and in her low social and economic state. In the year after September 30, 1962, more than fifty professors left the University of Mississippi. Many of them were literally forced from the state. The best of them, particularly the native Mississippians, would have remained if there had been any prospect of an atmosphere of freedom or a decent chance to fight for one. Forced to leave the University of North Carolina in 1857, a professor fired a parting salvo that is still relevant: "You may eliminate all the suspicious men from your institutions of learning, you may establish any number of new colleges which will relieve you of sending your sons to free institutions. But as long as people study, and read, and think among you, the absurdity of your system will be discovered and there will always be found some courageous intelligence to protest against your hateful tyranny." True enough, but as long as the next "intelligence" and the one after him are carefully eliminated, the tyranny remains and the society stays closed. In early 1963 a professor of the University of Mississippi (no longer on the faculty) wrote a letter to an editor, who chose not to publish it. Perhaps it was too long. In any case it deserves quotation: Men of good will who are content to sit on their hands silently hoping that nothing will rock the boat are seemingly unaware that the use of their oars might stay the foundering craft; these men are not leaders, nor are they followers. Leadership nurtures on controversy, it matures on intellectual dissension, it mellows on the free exchange of provocative ideas. A controversial, dissenting, and provocative faculty is therefore essential in developing a university-trained leader. Muzzle the faculty, restrict them to the "areas of competency," keep from the classrooms discussions of problems which are "out of our hands," don't talk of subjects offensive to people in Jackson. Follow these directions and students with no leaders of their own will find leaders as they found them on the night of September 30. But don't stop here, for leadership nurtures on controversy. And this controversy has stiffened a few faculty backbones. Previously The Voices of Dissent and the Future of the Closed Society 143 quiescent souls are speaking out, implanting ideas alien to the plantocratic dogma. A few open-minded students are listening and realizing that perhaps daddy's "Never" view is extreme. These students are the nascent leaders. Silence them! Ostracize those who seek to know more of their first Negro classmate. Censure those who question the existing order. Vandalize their quarters. Make them shape up or ship out. Then get to the heart of the problem. Harass the faculty members who inspire this sort of thinking. Work assiduously to be rid of them, to move them and their ideas away...