U.S. Federal Marshals at Lyceum, The Mississippian, Oct 1, 1962
On September 29, 1962, Robert L. Logan, a parts officer at U.S. Penitentiary Leavenworth, was sworn in as a U.S. Marshal, given an ID card, and put on a bus bound for Oxford, Mississippi. He planned for a six-to-seven-day trip spent at the University of Mississippi because “the university was in trouble.” An impending riot required twenty-five Leavenworth prison guards to become part of the early response to firings, explosions, and war-like conditions on the campus. Logan and his group surrounded the Lyceum as it was the point of James Howard Meredith’s entry to register as the first African American student at the university and as such the epicenter of the conflict.
Logan says in his transcription that he joined another one hundred and seventy-five U.S. Marshals and close to one hundred border agents that day, and that there were “six or seven thousand students and a lot of local yokels” protesting the entry of Meredith. The marshals were assailed by those throwing bricks, rocks, and Molotov cocktails. U.S. Marshals were prevented from firing unless direct fire was issued at their fellows, and no shots were fired by Logan’s account.
No acquiescence was possible with Governor Ross Barrnett, and a reluctant Attorney General Robert Kennedy said on Saturday, September 29, 1962, “We’d better get going with the military. Maybe we waited too long” (Doyle, 95). Logan and one officer procured a mattress thrown from an army truck, but many fellow officers slept on a concrete floor after twenty-four hours awake with no food or water. They noticed injuries they had shrugged-off during the heat of responding to the “insurrection” and after being flown by helicopter to Holly Springs to beds at the military encampment, they would return to campus to stand guard for Meredith’s entry.
For the U.S. Marshals, the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of James Meredith’s integration of the University of Mississippi brought renewed awareness to their presence at the riots on September 29th and 30th. A Leavenworth Times article within Logan’s collection claims oral histories collected from those present at Meredith’s entry to the university overlooked the Leavenworth officers’ accounts. The University of Mississippi recognized the marshals as part of the 50th celebration of integration in 2012.
Logan’s interview is part of a collection of manuscript materials in University collections titled The Robert L. Logan Collection. The collection is accessible at the Department of Archives and Special Collections, and other related information can be found in eGrove and in the library catalog.
Notes & Bibliography
Deputy U.S. Marshals 50th Anniversary Memory Book
James Howard Meredith Collection
Mississippi Highway Patrol Collection
The Mississippian, “October 01, 1962” (1962). Daily Mississippian (all digitized issues). 3507.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/thedmonline/3507
Purnell, Deborah, “U.S. marshals remember 1962” (2012). University of Mississippi News. 6973.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/umnews/6973
Author: Jeannie Speck-Thompson, University Archivist, July 2024.
