Ross Barnett: A Life Obscured by the Race Issue
Mississippi Governor's Career Ignored by Historians
Feb 1, 2009
Ross Barnett, Governor of Mississippi from 1960-1964, came to power at a time when the Magnolia State faced its most tumultuous period since Reconstruction. Many historians have taken the simplistic view of Barnett as a segregationist Southern politician of the era and have been largely negligent in studying his administration, his legal career, and life as a whole.
A strong case can be argued that Barnett’s unrepentant stand against the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962—certainly a watershed event in the Civil Rights Movement—has created a barrier of sorts in regard to objective evaluations and portrayals of the former governor’s life and career. Barnett’s failure in later years to recant or soften his position only solidified these barriers.
Astonishingly, no historian has ever attempted to write a biography of Barnett. The only such foray is a very brief, 133-page effort published in 1980 by Erle Johnston. The work was a sympathetic piece that might be expected from a former press secretary of the subject, which Johnston was.
Milestones and musings from Barnett’s life available to potential authors to explore, include:
- As Barnett waded through the Ole Miss integration crisis, 100 years had just passed from the onset of the Civil War; amazingly, Barnett’s father fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States.
- Barnett was an accomplished plaintiff’s attorney who became president of the Mississippi Bar Association in 1944.
- Unlike most other gubernatorial candidates, Barnett never sought any other office. He ran unsuccessfully in 1951 and 1955 before being elected in 1959.
- Barnett inspired 41 new pieces of legislation during his term aimed at economic development and made the state more business-friendly by providing tax exemptions and cutting state income tax in half, from 6% to 3%.
- Due at least in part to Barnett'seconomic development efforts, census reports suggest that Mississippi’s population grew by over 30,000 each of the four years he was in office--even in the face of Mississippi's well-documented civil rights issues.
- State law prevented Barnett from seeking re-election in 1963. He had enjoyed popularity unprecedented by his predecessors for his handling of the Meredith case and his vocal opposition to the Kennedy Administration. However, he sought the office again in 1967 and finished fourth in the Democratic primary. One must wonder how the state’s electorate shifted so greatly in such a short period of time.
- Ross Barnett, Jr. followed his father into the legal arena and built a private practice in Jackson specializing in criminal defense. A large portion of his clientele was African-American.
- Barnett's daughter, Ouida Barnett Atkins, spent an entire career teaching in one of Jackson's nearly all-black high schools.
Barnett was no George Wallace
What separates Ross Barnett from his peers in the Southern political arena of his time was his consistently steadfast belief in states’ rights and local self-determination. While his views were popular during his time in office, Barnett continued to espouse his convictions long after they came to be viewed as relics of a bygone era and had lost political favor. In short, he never had a second political life as, for example, Alabama’s George Wallace did.
While Barnett’s failure to soften his positions is probably the greatest factor in the short shrift he has been given by historians, his four years in office will never be erased and deserve more scrutiny, as does his entire life.
Sources:
Johnston, Erle (1980). I Rolled With Ross: A Political Portrait. Baton Rouge, LA: Moran.
McMillen, Neil (1975). An Oral History with The Honorable Ross Robert Barnett, Former Governor of the State of Mississippi. The Mississippi Oral History Program of the University of Southern Mississippi, Volume XXVI.
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