On September 26 the headlines said, “Soviet Trawlers to Use New Port Planned in Cuba . . . U.S. Is Prepared to Send Troops.” The one headline referred to the establishment of Cuba as central supply and maintenance base for Soviet naval operations in the Atlantic Ocean. The other headline had to do with forcing a state university to admit a new student; Mr. Meredith wants that campus and Mr. Khrushchev wants the Western Hemisphere: and the Kennedy Administration is slowly running out of time to figure out which area most needs a show of force.
Those who are pouring their scorn on Governor Barnett (i.e., everybody) would do well to try to understand that, however mistaken they—and we— believe his views on the race problem to be, he understands himself to be defending a principle, and a very honorable principle, the principle of home rule. Along came the Warren Court, and home rule, in respect to education, was simply repealed. That is the way Barnett looks at it. We don’t know how good a student he is of the Constitution, but we know how bad a student of the Constitution Earl Warren is. And let those who weep for James Meredith reflect on whether they really think of him as a human being—is he really going to be happier, or better off, at the University of Mississippi, where he is not wanted, than he would be at a Negro college?—or merely as a means to their ideological end.
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