Last Days in Mississippi

...Whether I have acted courageously is immaterial...

...But, it would be reprehensible conduct of some sort...

...But in the case of a friend in Natchez, his family was being harassed...

...Now, this physical danger is a difficult thing to come to terms with, because you can't prove you are in physical danger until you have been hurt...

...Let me give you an example of how others feel about it...

...This is when they write their books...

...I've never known a more inoffensive man in my life...

...Now, I think I was helping -the University...

...My accepting a permanent position at Notre Dame was a promotion, financially and professionally, but I don't think this was a major cause of my departure...

...I have too...

...For example, there is this matter which I consider pretty close to blackmail...

...Silver: I've learned one thing...

...Q. How do you explain your leaving...

...I thought about lawyers in Mississippi, and the first law firm I asked did take my case...

...Silver: Well, a three-man committee was set up almost three years ago to investigate my conduct, and I came before it in March of 1964...

...What methods were employed...

...So this was a very vague charge the committee was making against me...

...And finally, he wrote his now famous book, Mississippi: The Closed Society (Harcourt, Brace & World), in which he attacked the state's segregation policies and, he says, attempted to delineate the truth about the campus violence...

...But growing tired, he decided, after a period of anguished rationalization, to leave the state and accept a position at Notre Dame...

...This is just a judgment on my part, but I think when the Board saw that I not only was going to fight this but had first-class legal talent behind me, it decided to stop pressing me...

...I have a great feeling in my heart for the University...

...That was Teller, Biedenharn and Rogers in Vicksburg...

...They took the case, and from that time on, I have never talked with the Board except through lawyers...

...He befriended Meredith...

...Most assuredly, I feel a sadness about leaving...

...There were three members of the committee and the executive secretary of the Board, and I felt they had slipped up on me...

...This frightened me simply because I didn't want to become a Federal case, and if the thing were carried to its logical conclusion, I might end up at the University as the result of a court order...

...In larger institutions, where the salaries are better, men take the summer off for reading, travel, or even recreation...

...Q. What actual pressures were applied against you that may have influenced your decision to leave Ole Miss and Mississippi...

...Silver: Of course...

...Silver: Well, there are certain things I cannot discuss in detail...

...I lost 25 or 30 friends who left the state...

...I asked him again in June point-blank whether he thought my leaving would help, and he said, "Yes...

...He was driven off financially...

...This meeting was arranged by the American Civil Liberties Union, and several Civil Liberties Union people were there...

...Fortunately, he survived, but I would guess the same people who tried to get him would like to get me...

...These friends were apprehensive because they had gotten word that hecklers, Ku Kluxers, or whatever, were coming to the meeting, and they wanted to be on the safe side...

...L.S.U., Georgia and Alabama all integrated, and nobody was hurt...

...Do you think he was shot because of his beliefs...

...It's that simple...

...How Silver: I would like to interrupt you there and suggest that people in Mississippi in particular, and I guess people everywhere, talk in terms of courage...

...They came close to destroying the University...

...But once he makes up his mind, he finds good cause for leaving...

...They wanted to take my case at once to the Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans and ask for an injunction against the Board, on the ground that the Board was invading my civil liberties...

...I suggest that nobody knows what this means...

...During those years he frequently found himself on troubled ground because of his stand against the social structure of the state...

...It would have been 30 years last year...

...The Mississippi power structure retaliated, and the historian discovered that his entire career at the University was at stake...

...All I can say is that a man who assumes he's not in danger in Mississippi, if he believes in civil rights, is a damn fool...

...I want Ole Miss to recover and to become the great school it was on the way to becoming in the early 1950s...

...An Ole Miss chaplain pulled out because he thought it would help his local church...

...I couldn't prove it in court or even before the Board of Trustees, some of whom have discussed "getting" me in certain ways...

...My notion was that these questions were for the purpose of trapping me into error...

...I knew a lawyer in Meridian who left...

...It happened right in Jackson...

...This may be because it is rural dominated...

...Silver: I certainly do...

...The Chancellor has to deal with the Board, and the Board has to deal with the Legislature, and the Legislature in Mississippi is the one group that I think has demonstrably learned almost nothing from the troubles in Oxford, Little Rock and Birmingham...

...Silver: I don't feel defeated in the slightest...

...It was almost an axiom, during the year after Meredith came, that when the administration did the right thing, it was because of pressure from the faculty-usually from a committee set up by the AAUP...

...I answered by saying I had been doing nothing beyond telling the truth as I knew it...

...I went down to Jackson to speak before 300 people in a large hotel, and I discovered afterwards that friends of mine who were there brought along one pistol and two shotguns...

...I could have left 10 or 15 years ago under the same circumstances...

...However, I cannot prove it...

...I believe a friend of yours, the Reverend Donald Thompson, was shot down...

...In my own case, there are some people in the Legislature and at least two members of the Board of Trustees who had an almost primary end in life to get rid of me...

...I taught at Notre Dame for a year...

...He simply told me that I had been harming the image of Mississippi...

...Ole Miss has been hurt badly...

...Q. I believe you were at Ole Miss 29 or 30 years...

...I can't identify it...

...Silver: The administration at the University has been weak and wishy-washy...

...After appearing before it, I felt I had been treated as a person would be in a kangaroo court...

...Q. What are some of the other reasons for your leaving Ole Miss...

...Roberts is the chairman of a special committee which was set up by the Board almost three years ago to investigate what he called contumacious conduct...

...But I can't put my finger on it...

...I will admit, having been in the outside world for a year, I have found it to be a very pleasant place...

...he had done something the community didn't like, his business just went to pot, and he had to leave...

...In this interview-if that's what it was-I was told by M. M. Roberts of Hattiesburg, who is a very shrewd trial lawyer, that if I would promise to stop talking about the state of Mississippi on the outside, the charges would be dropped against me...

...He made speeches defending the actions of the marshals...

...I determined immediately that I would not submit to this, and not having any assistance that I could depend on within the state, I went to New York where I talked with about six of the best constitutional lawyers in the country...

...I left of my own free will...

...He makes up his mind, and perhaps he doesn't even know why he wants to leave...

...In Hattiesburg, a rabbi was dismissed by his congregation because he was too active in civil rights...

...Q. How great, in your opinion, is the physical danger to anyone who fights the social system in Mississippi...

...They didn't tell me what I was being called for, and they practically assaulted me with questions...

...There are many dozens and even hundreds of influences of which the individual is not conscious at any given moment...

...At about this time also I asked for a leave of absence...

...The Board was glad to get me out of the state, and this is an additional reason why they didn't press the charges...

...They would use whatever methods were necessary to bring about the desired result...

...The interview took place before James Meredith was shot in the back, on June 6, while attempting a march across Mississippi...

...There are five or six potential assailants in every town in Mississippi, and all you need is one idiot...

...Politicians and weak leadership generally are responsible for this...

...He is a Unitarian minister, and he was shot down, I am absolutely certain, because he was an officer in the Mississippi Council of Human Relations...

...I blame the plight of the University on the politicians, especially Governor Ross Barnett and his henchmen...

...Q. Many people, including those who strongly disagree with you, have commented on your courage...

...I think I ought to get this straight...

...So, from New York I went to Washington to the national office of the American Association of University Professors [AAUP], These people offered to take care of the cost if I could get a Mississippi law firm to take my case, which most of the people in New York and Washington doubted would be possible...

...In the interview that follows, Silver reflects upon his own last days in Mississippi and the physical danger facing anyone opposing the state's social system...

...But, as I said, I cannot prove this in a court of law...

...Obviously, I have liked the University and the state of Mississippi...

...The administration, as far as I can see, is perfectly willing for the University of Mississippi to join the civilized world of the intellectual...

...Sean O'Croimin, a new contributor to these pages, is a freelance correspondent living in the South...

...In other words, I would be testifying, perhaps for a day or a day-and-a-half and then I thought the Board would go over this with a fine tooth comb and try to find a place where I had perjured myself, which anybody could do in a discussion of this sort...

...As long as I was there, the inference was, since I'm a controversial figure, the University would be hurt...

...You see, we have a system, a protocol, for the dismissal of professors at the University, and I suppose at the other state schools, and one of the things that a man may be dismissed for is contumacious conduct...

...Although the interview, or the contest, went on for a couple of hours, I repeatedly told them that I would promise nothing...

...Q. You mentioned that some of the members on the Board of Trustees had discussed "getting" you in certain ways...

...It has reacted to pressure...

...Now, the point is, I'm sure that practically everybody who leaves the state rationalizes his leaving...

...I think I helped enormously outside the state, because I know a great many people said as long as Silver is there, it's an indication of freedom and tolerance in the University and in the state...

...I talked with a high University administration official in February, a friend of mine for 25 years whose judgment I do not question, or at least, whose integrity I do not question, and he inferred that my leaving would be of benefit to the University, because as long as I was there and was challenged by politicians who disliked me, the University would be hurt in the way of appropriations and in other ways...

...I do not feel that I have been forced out...

...Q. What was the final outcome...

...I hope I never again question the motivation of any person for any action, simply because I cannot be sure of why I act the way I do...

...A CONVERSATION WITH JAMES SILVER Last Days in Mississippi By Sean O'Croimin For more than a quarter of a century James W. Silver, Professor of History, dedicated his life to the University of Mississippi...

...But there are a good many people who leave voluntarily, and yet it isn't voluntary, because they are leaving from pressure, some of which they can't even recognize...

...For three years, he never stopped fighting...

...Do you feel any personal sadness about leaving the school...

...You can't stay around a place for 30 years without it...

...Silver: As I said in the beginning, there are many, many things that go into the making up of a man's mind...

...You see, no charges had even been proffered, so I immediately asked him what the charges were...

...I said four years ago that there would be 10 years of entrenched mediocrity at the University, and I say we still have six years to go...

...I want to lead an orderly, peaceful existence, and this, unquestionably, was part of my motivation for leaving...

...But everyone who teaches there pays a financial price...

...But it also has reacted, I think too much, to these petty influences from within the state...

...I don't think there is any question about this, and I am sure University officials would admit this...

...It never has been a great school, but it may be in time...

...Q. In leaving Ole Miss, after all your years there, did you feel that you were leaving as a defeated man...

...Silver: Well, that was in March, and I left and heard nothing until about the first of May when I received a letter from the Board asking me-requiring me-to come at some later date before another committee to answer under oath 15 very leading questions about some things that the Board thought I had said in the previous year and a half...

...Then, on the night of September 30, 1962, the trouble and his conscience propelled him into a course of action that eventually led to the end of his long career at the University...

...I could have stayed and stuck it out, but my life would have been completely wrapped up in the situation there, and nothing else...

...I have two more books I want to write, and now I can get to them...

...Q. As a result of this, how do you feel toward the University administration...

...There have been vicious rumors in the statewho starts them I don't knowabout a number of things which are very, very personal, and there have been people using a kind of slander...

...therefore, I can't very well talk further about it...

...That night he witnessed the violent campus clashes with United States marshals who came to protect James H. Meredith, the first Negro to attend Ole Miss-a mad insurrection against the United States government, as Silver put it, which alternately enraged him and made him heartsick...

...I spent my adult life at the University of Mississippi...

...In my case, I found it necessary to teach every summer to pay my debts to get even and start the fall...

...I'm not so sure that this is even appropriate...

...Now, these things are not only unconventional, they are evil in themselves...

...I would rather have it said that I have acted intelligently...