Exodus from Ole Miss

When he entered his first-floor office one night, a University of Mississippi staffman was just in time to see a figure clamber out of the window and dart away into the night. The prowler had stolen nothing, but he had ransacked the desk. What was the man after? The staffman's conclusion: any personal notes or letters containing sentiments in favor of racial integration.

At most any other campus, such a cloak-and-dagger tale would seem unbelievable. But in the last two years the whole segregation controversy has had some strange and frightening effects on the Ole Miss campus at Oxford (pop. 3,956). Last week, in a series of articles on the morale of the university, the Greenville (Miss.) Delta Democrat-Times told just how serious those effects have been. Of 136 assistant, associate and full professors, 31 have resigned to seek "greener and freer pastures" elsewhere.

Though some professors have left because of their salaries, which are an average $1,200 a year below the national average for state universities, most give as their reason increasing infringement on their freedom. Best publicized example came last year, when the university barred the Rev. Alvin Kershaw from speaking at its Religious Emphasis Week (TIME, Feb. 27, 1956). The reason: Kershaw, who had won $32,000 on a quiz program as a jazz expert, had said he was going to give some of his winnings to the N.A.A.C.P. Professor Morton B. King Jr., for 20 years chairman of the sociology department, resigned in protest, charging that the university "was no longer able to defend the freedom of thought, inquiry and speech which is essential for higher education to flourish." Instead of taking King's resignation as a warning that other professors might follow suit, the state house of representatives formally denounced him. urged all state campuses to step up their guard against such "subversive influences."

At Ole Miss, professors chafed under the legislature's bullying, became increasingly resentful of the affidavits they were required to sign listing all organizations they had ever joined or contributed to. Some legislators demanded that every book on Negroes be banned from the university library. Others have kept up a running attack on Dean Robert J. Farley of the law school because he signed a document asking respect for the U.S. Supreme Court after its decisions against segregation. Worst of all, the anti-integration hysteria has become so pervasive that many students have become spies and informers for segregationists in the state, each keeping his own blacklist of suspects. "You can imagine," says one graduate student, "the frustration of those people who live in fear of being put on one of the lists. They spend their time talking about nothing but how much they favor segregation."

Concluded the Delta Democrat-Times from its interviews with the faculty: ''The fact that it is almost impossible to get good replacements [for those leaving] makes the situation even more alarming. After all, prospective recruits reason, why come to Mississippi for less money and less freedom?"

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