And I Said No Lord: A Twenty-One-Year-Old in Mississippi in 1964

1. In the Capital: Urban and Rural

9 1in the capitol urban and rural 10 ries above the floor I was standing on. In the center of the rotunda was a circular banister surrounding a hole in the floor, through which I could see a gesticulating lifesize statue of Mississippi’s late governor and senator Theodore Bilbo. On the bottom floor, which is at ground level in the rear of the capitol, were located various offices and services, portraits of Mississippi’s former governors and famous sons, a sandwich bar operated by the Mississippi Association for the Blind, and bathrooms for “Colored Men” and “Colored Women.” Two floors of balconies opened onto the rotunda, the lower of which led to the governor ’s offices and the two legislative halls. In each of the four massive piers of the rotunda was carved a niche. The niches were surrounded by frosted yellow floodlights, lending them a marquee effect. Two of these four niches were empty, although the lights around them were lit. In the other two were portraits, one a painting and the other a color photograph , of Mississippi’s two Miss Americas, dressed in ermine-trimmed red robes, crowned, and sceptered. There have been two more Miss Americas from Mississippi , so I assume all four niches are now filled. Past these two portraits of Mississippi’s royalty enshrined, I walked up a broad flight of steps to the floor above, the third floor, where Frank D. Barber Jr., special assistant to Governor Paul B. Johnson Across the tracks from Jackson’s black section is Mississippi ’s state capitol, completed in 1903 on the site formerly occupied by the state penitentiary. Perched on top of a graded lawn, the capitol is, as described by the souvenir handbook distributed by Mississippi’s secretary of state, the most important and most prominent building in the South, which far surpasses in beauty, if not in size, all the capitols in the Southern states. The style adopted is a pure renaissance classic of a dignity and elegance of proportion which fittingly expresses the power, honor, and stability of the State. To many visitors entering the portals of this magnificent structure, the interior will be a veritable revelation. Upon walking up several flights of steps and passing through a short, low vestibule between two sets of open doors, I was confronted with a huge, elaborate, glittering rotunda more than two hundred feet in diameter and only a little less in height. Entirely of cream Italian marble with trimming of jet black scagliola, eight huge piers, becoming freestanding columns at the beginning of the second story, thrust upward. The richly decorated marble and gilded dome, starred with lights, was three sto- 11 “Sir?” “Well, take an example. Let’s suppose that a group of our people went up North, to New York, and walked into an Orthodox Jewish synagogue and walked down the aisle ridiculing all their customs and things. It would be like that. We have hundreds of years of traditions and customs down here.” “The only difference,” I offered, “is that there seems to be a discrepancy down here between traditions and the law.” “Now the Civil Rights Bill hasn’t been passed yet by the House of Representatives. There’s nothing down here that violates the law. Wait and see. It hasn’t been passed yet.” “What about the Supreme Court desegregation ruling of 1954?” “Now that’s why the governor is having all these legislative sessions, so the schools won’t have to close.” He spoke very informally, his gestures intimate and expansive. “It’s all part of a big plot, this so-called Mississippi Summer Project, to get the army down here.” “What would they have to gain by that?” “Heaven only knows, son.” He walked over to the window, hands clasped behind his back, stared out, then sat down again. “The purpose of SNCC is to foment trouble.” Jr., had his office. I introduced myself to this genial, handsome man as a senior at Yale writing a thesis on Mississippi. “Did you say Yale or COFO?” “Yale, sir,” I answered. “I have nothing to do with COFO.” He shook my hand then and smiled and invited me to his office. Busied by the arrival of the Mississippi Summer Project and by the national publicity about the three missing civil rights workers, who had disappeared outside of Philadelphia three days earlier, he was interrupted almost immediately by a...