Full Circle: 60 Years Later, Law School Reflects on Defining Moment
Alumni gather with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to celebrate event that reshaped dialogue, free expression
OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi's Tad Smith Coliseum hosted its last crowd Wednesday (March 18), exactly 60 years to the date when its historic first crowd gathered in 1966 to hear U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy speak at the invitation of the School of Law Speakers Bureau.
Perhaps fittingly, a Kennedy was again the event's focus.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland and the eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, attended the event commemorating the 60th anniversary of her father's speech, joining those who were law students and guests in 1966.
"I loved being in the coliseum," Townsend said. "To think that everyone was so courageous (in 1966) – the law students, the school, the board of trustees – to extend an invitation to my father where many people probably didn't agree with him, but at least showing politeness, showing openness and then laughing with him."
The event also included a screening of the documentary "You Asked for the Facts: Bobby Kennedy at the University of Mississippi," by Mary Blessey, and a panel discussion.
The panelists included Gerald Blessey, 1966 Law School Student Speakers Association member; Donald Cole, former UM assistant provost; Ed Ellington, 1966 Law Student Speakers Association member; Jeanne Morse Lykes, daughter of former law dean Joshua Morse; Frank Thackston, 1966 Law Student Speakers Association member; and Townsend.
Just four years after James Meredith's enrollment as the university's first Black student, an event in which Kennedy played a key role, many perceived that Ole Miss would not be a welcoming campus in 1966.
"One of the things we were trying to do 60 years ago was, in practice, guarantee free speech that the First Amendment guarantees, and the fundamental value of our country," Blessey said.
"The magic of the university, the magic of the law school, is to have mutual respect for diverging viewpoints and try to let truth be evicted."
The students had to work some of their own magic to pull off the event because they were in search of facts concerning phone conversations in 1962 between Gov. Ross Barnett, President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, who was then the attorney general.
Despite the state having a law at the time that banned outside speakers from speaking on campus, the law school students presented a list of potential speakers for approval. The list ran the political spectrum and happened to include Kennedy.
The Ole Miss administration approved the list, and the students immediately sent an invitation to Kennedy.
Unbeknownst to them, they were leading change.
"It makes me think about Mississippi, and then there's the University of Mississippi," Cole said. "Sometimes, they are infused into one single entity, and other times, they are separate.
"And the university should be leading, and if we base everything all for the truth, and how you get to the truth, you put all the ideas on the table, discuss them, debate them, research them, in the end, the truth is going to fall."
Once Kennedy accepted the invitation to speak, reaction poured in from across the region.
"Pushback was overwhelming," Thackston said. "Remarkably vitriol."
Even an elementary school student in 1966 felt the pushback.
"People weren't allowed to spend the night or come over to my house," Lykes said. "There were news trucks parked at the end of the driveway. We couldn't go to school.
"I invited my best friend to hear the speech and her mom asked if we would rather go shopping. We were like 'No, not on a dare.' You have to do what you believe."
Despite the pushback, some 6,000 people attended Kennedy's speech.
"Because of all the uncertainty and negativity, whether they liked him or not, they welcomed him," Thackston said.
We wanted to be part of the American future, Blessey said.
The future in attendance saw Kennedy as a human being and listened.
"He was very smart to bring my mother with him, because I think it softened him a great deal," Townsend said. "He was very happy that he had received such a warm reception and it lifted his spirits about how people can be open to him and open to his message.
"He knew that he was, as he said, 'the chicken in the fox house,' and yet, things can change, people can change and people want something better for themselves and for our country."
The 1966 event was transformative and influenced many, Blessey said.
He and Ellington later found themselves in the Mississippi Legislature.
"I think it really was a motivation," Blessey said. "We were interested in politics and it was an affirmation to me."
Current law students will have an opportunity to lead the way and perhaps provide similar transformative events. The speakers bureau is being reconstituted.
"It (the 1966 event) is a great model for a mission that is so important, which is that we can treat each other with dignity and build something that is good for us and for our children," Townsend said.
