As we headed back to Hanover for our junior year in the late summer of 1963, our world, at home and abroad, was changing in ways that would affect us for the rest of our lives. In August James Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi with a degree in political science (and a French minor), becoming the first African-American to graduate from Ole Miss in its 118-year history. He went on to law school at Columbia. The battle, however, was just beginning. On August 28, 1963, during the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to a crowd estimated at more than a quarter of a million people. Our campus was torn by debate over segregation and racial discrimination throughout the fall semester.
Freshman Week kicked off, with guidance from Green Key President Dick Durrance and the Interdormitory Council, with Tucky Mays and Larry Hannah, as vice president and secretary-treasurer, respectively. President Dickey again admonished the incoming class that their “business here is learning,” an expression that took on more meaning with the passage of time. The Daily D staff, including photo editor Stu Leiber and night editor Ed Goodkind, who had won a Wall Street Journal scholarship for his reporting, put out special issues for Freshman Week to inform the newcomers and remind the rest of us of changes on campus and around the world. Many of our campus organizations were riven by questions of race and due process as the term wore on.
The Undergraduate Council invited George Wallace to speak on campus in November. They described the visit as “an opportunity for a direct confrontation with the governor and his views” with the object of enlivening “concern and awareness of the [segregationist] problem on campus” and not an expression of support—part of the business of learning.
While we were addressing racial discrimination President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam and his brother ordered a crackdown on Buddhist temples, leading to the Xa Loi Pagoda raids, exacerbating the unrest within his country. In September the president’s sister-in-law, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, appeared at Harvard and Columbia. Nearly 1,000 Harvard students loudly rejected her claim that there was “absolute religious freedom in Vietnam.” Sensing that we might be backing the wrong man, the State Department, with the knowledge of President Kennedy, cabled Henry Cabot Lodge, newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Saigon, indicating that he should “make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem’s replacement if this should become necessary.” Even so, Gen. Maxwell Taylor approved Operation 34A, to authorize American support for covert operations against North Vietnam, setting the stage for the Tonkin Gulf Incident.
We found some diversion in September and October, when, led by Ted Bracken, Pete Frederick, Bruce Gottschall, Bob Komives, Jack McLean, Dave Perinchief and Gary Wilson, Bob Blackman’s charges extended their nation-leading win streak to 15 before dropping a 17-13 heartbreaker to Harvard.
Please send me a note about what you have been doing.
—Tom Long, 1056 Leigh Mill Road, Great Falls, VA 22066; (703) 759-4255; tomlong@erols.com
