First International Conference on Race:
Racial Reconciliation
Sponsored by the William Winter Institute for Racial
Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi

OLE MISS
Thank you for your welcome. It may lack the spontaneity and unbridled enthusiasm with which I was greeted here 41 years ago. But on the whole I prefer being here on the steps of the Lyceum as an invited guest.

The admission to Ole Miss of James Meredith on my first visit here was a sad occasion for the University, for the state of Mississippi, and for the nation as a whole. Problems of race engaged the country's attention and strained our governmental processes. For almost a decade the Supreme Court had determined in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public education violated the United States Constitution and for almost a decade politicians in the south had used every conceivable ruse to resist integration, too often with the support of judges who lacked the courage to follow an unpopular decision. Even President Eisenhower's use of troops at Little Rock had not succeeded in convincing the rest of the South. Governor Ross Barnett was only one of the Southern governors to preach segregation forever, though he went substantially further than his predecessors and colleagues in embracing the most extreme white supremacists. Unhappily, the university administration stood with him; perhaps they felt they had no choice.

It is not my intention to reminisce this evening on the events of that evening. Like your chancellor and the current university administration, I think it should be celebrated as a beginning - an event from which much can be and has been learned. This university should take great pride in what it has accomplished by way of racial diversity under the most difficult of circumstances. The forced admission of James Meredith can be viewed simply as the starting point for the ever-improving education at this university - as well as an ever-improving football team. I congratulate you, Mr. Chancellor, on your truly remarkable accomplishments to date and the doors you have flung open to an even greater academic future.

The issue of race has, of course, been with us as a dividing social and political problem virtually all of our history. Attempts to solve slavery divided the Constitutional Convention and led to an uneasy compromise. Cheap labor was perceived as crucially important to the agrarian economy of the south and divided our federal government from its beginnings. While a Civil War resolved the problem of slavery and purported to give former slaves equal protection of the laws, it did not solve the problem of racial division and discrimination. Indeed, the industrial revolution and the movement of cheap black labor north to New York and the Rust Belt of the Middle-West nationalized the problem without resolving it. In the post-World War II era we were left with a large racial minority, formally segregated by both law and custom in the South and socially and economically discriminated against in the rest of the country. Only after blacks successfully pursued their constitutional rights in the courts and demonstrated for social justice in the streets, did the problem force white America to deal with race as should have been done all along.

In our efforts to solve the problems of race and two centuries of discrimination against blacks, together blacks and whites have obviously made significant and, given our history, in many ways remarkable, progress. In this effort the South has been a leader, and in higher education Ole Miss has, in recent years, to its great credit, been in the forefront.

Obviously much remains to be done before we have put to rest vestiges of our long history of racial discrimination. But, despite pockets of overt racial tension and a good deal of hidden and often unconscious racial bias, it is clear that the problems of race are at long last being solved. We still have a long way to go and the process is painfully slow. What is clear is that today ours is a high tech economy that depends heavily upon the productivity of an educated citizenry and one where there are relatively few jobs for others. American business executives understand this, and quite apart from any moral issues, both education and racial conciliation is essential if we are to be a leader in the world and continue to be its most advanced and productive economy.

There have been, of course, larger consequences of the struggle for racial equality. The Chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, Virginia's Congressman Smith, who led the opposition in the House to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in a cynical effort to defeat the legislation, introduced the amendment which included equal opportunity for women. It did not defeat the legislation and has had consequences certainly neither contemplated nor desired by Judge Smith or his colleagues - consequences of great significance in our social and economic life. In 1962 it was as unimaginable for women to be presidents of three Ivy League and at least two great Southern universities as it was for James Meredith to attend Ole Miss. And while Kennedy was our first Catholic President, I doubt anyone contemplated a Jew running for vice-President and now for President - or a black Secretary of State. Our country has changed in many ways and our social and governmental institutions have been strained in their efforts to adjust and accommodate to fundamental changes not equally pleasing to all citizens.

Change -whatever its cause - brings its own problems and its own need for adjustments which are not always easy. White citizens have not always found black progress easy to adjust to, just as males have not always been comfortable with women in what men viewed as male jobs. The traditional family has been impacted and in the throes of quite radical shifts of perspective with respect to relations between the sexes we seek to preserve values, customs, traditions - however anachronistic - with which we feel comfortable - sometimes even trying to invoke them to oppose change itself. Through the miracles of technology we have radio, television, the Internet - all marvelous means of communication, of sharing ideas, experiences, thoughts. The potential for shared knowledge is tremendous and exciting. So, too, is the potential for abuse - for imposing thought and values rather than sharing them.

Directly related to the change begun by the Civil Rights revolution is the need for greatly improved education, especially at the lower classroom levels. There is widespread agreement on the need to improve education at every level; universities like this one need students who are academically qualified. Neglect - particularly in the inner-city schools of the industrial centers - leaves us with a hugely expensive problem, and our consensus about need is not yet matched by a consensus as to how to pay for it. We cannot solve our continuing racial problems without solving the question of how to finance adequately public education at all levels. Nor can we continue in the forefront of the technological revolution without spending for universal education at all levels. Failure to do so will result in dividing our nation not simply along racial lines but along class lines as well. That would be a tragic consequence.

This nation was founded on concepts of freedom of religion, speech and thought which can exist only if we have a tolerance and basic respect for the views of each other. Obviously respect for others does not flourish when human differences based on class, or race, or wealth are so great as to lead to convictions about superiority. At a minimum, respect and tolerance require at least equal opportunity for all. That was at the heart of the fight for racial equality. In many ways the fundamental foundation of equal opportunity lies in the opportunity to be educated, to be employed on one's merits, and to realize one's full potential. It is important to earning a living and providing for loved ones. But it is also important to preserving freedom in a complex and difficult world, to see common values and aspirations, and to tolerate - indeed, welcome - differences of viewpoint.

When educators talk about the importance of diversity we are inclined to think of diversity in terms of racial and ethnic differences. These have importance; but diversity, I think, means much more. It is of vital importance to bringing about that spirit of free inquiry, of listening to others, of exploring differences, of respecting the ideas and passions of others whatever their backgrounds and even if we disagree and are not convinced by what they say. Tolerance is not a passive condition. It is a spirit and attitude of active inquiry, of testing one's own views against those which are different and with which perhaps one disagrees. It is important to knowledge, to learning from the experience and thoughts of others, to keeping an open mind. And it is extremely important to preserving a society that is both free and capable of adjusting to change while maintaining that freedom. The more complex our society becomes, the more important knowledge and understanding become key to resolving problems of conflict. But knowledge without tolerance- like power without knowledge - can be a danger to freedom.

In our political system and in our laws from the country's very beginnings we have valued the views of others, allowing for differences and seeking consensus -- not imposition by a majority -- in writing our laws. It is no accident that the Civil Rights Acts of the Sixties were enacted with the votes of a majority of both parties and after weeks of discussion, debate and compromise. As one who spent weeks and months on Capitol Hill, let me assure you that the legislation which passed was not dictated by anyone. Being members of political parties does not relieve our legislators of their responsibilities to all constituents, not merely those who supported or helped to finance their candidacies.

When we say with pride that we have a government of laws it reflects our historical effort to achieve as much consensus as is possible by constitutionally protecting fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, and association from governmental control. To preserve those freedoms from the potential tyranny of a majority we have relied upon an independent judiciary. It was a great Southern justice, John Marshall, who decided that courts had the final say with respect to the Constitution which has served us so well, even though it necessarily brought judges into political controversy where constitutional issues were present. But it did so in a limited and nonpartisan way by establishing the independence of judges by giving them lifetime tenure, and by insisting on a process that respected both reason and precedent. To perform their constitutional political function judges must repress personal preferences and viewpoints and, at times, exhibit great courage - as the judges of the Fifth Circuit did during the height of the Civil Rights struggle. Ideologues of any stripe make poor protectors of fundamental freedoms.

When I visited here in 1962 it was to enforce the order of the Supreme Court against political opposition. That was, happily, a rare duty in a society which traditionally respected the Constitution as interpreted by the courts. No institution of our government has so consistently enjoyed the respect and confidence of our citizenry as the Supreme Court. And, I have always assumed, the Court thought even Brown v. Board of Education, despite its message on race, would - albeit unhappily and grudgingly - be respected. But the change it demanded was seen as so fundamental that not even the most respected of our political institutions could carry the day. Many - almost every white in the South - saw the decision, however clearly supported by the words of the Constitution, as "political." If it was "political" - if the Court has overstepped its proper function and intruded into what was for elected officials to decide - then opposition seemed more respectable. While I do not accept that the Court went beyond its Constitutional mandate, it is obvious that matters would have been less explosive if Congress had done its constitutional duty as it eventually did in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. What was legislated in those acts was accepted surprisingly well. As I have said, in solving racial problems I think the South has in many ways, despite its traditions, led the way. But in 1962, here at this university, our governmental institutions were strained as they had not been for a century. No one on either side wanted to repeat that scene.

One demonstration of a modicum of sense and goodwill despite the riot occurred the next morning after James Meredith entered Ole Miss. Bob Farley, the dean of the law school, invited me to meet with the law faculty and students at the law school to discuss the problems of Sunday night. I accepted. Despite obvious and understandable hostility from some students, we had a civilized discussion about the Constitution and how our government of laws worked. I have always felt with that discussion that Ole Miss began to learn and profit from that terrible event the next day - the law school meeting was a credit to the best values of intellectual inquiry and discussion. And the benefit ran in both directions. I gained a better understanding of the resentment felt by so many on this campus - not all of which was related to race.

Today as a nation we are more divided than we have been since the Civil War. The division is not geographic or racial as it was then - although race still plays a role. It is founded on the results of technology, and those results force change upon us with a rapidity to which adjustment is difficult. Values founded on earlier and different social and economic facts often appear threatened - just as so many whites saw equal rights for black citizens as a threat to deeply held values based on racial prejudice. There are times when I suspect all of us have felt angered by the pace of change, when like King Canute we wanted to stem the tide.

We will not, as a nation, succeed if we seek to impose views held even by a majority on passionate minorities. Our present greatness and, I believe, our future depends on our capacity to adjust, to listen, to tolerate, to compromise, to seek consensus in our own society as well as in a world growing ever smaller. Today that depends importantly on great universities like this to maintain political independence, to pursue knowledge, and to value diversity in all its many aspects - and to make sure we understand that knowledge is always expanding and opening new vistas of opportunity.

I think that is the most important lesson to be learned from the event we remember tonight.

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