Book review: Joe T. Patterson and the White South's Dilemma: Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement

Abstract

In September of 1962, after failing in several attempts to prevent the integration of the University of Mississippi, Gov. Ross Barnett hatched one final plan. He would have would-be student James Meredith arrested on a trumped-up charge of voter fraud, leaving the African American in local police custody and unavailable to be escorted by federal marshals to Ole Miss in Oxford. This plan was foiled when state attorney general Joe Patterson (1956–1969) informed U.S. attorney general Robert Kennedy and his deputy Burke Marshall of the plan to arrest Meredith, and thus cleared the way for his registration and the deadly riot that followed.