Mississippi Mud

"All of us ought to be against anything in our textbooks that would teach subversion or integration," cried fiery Ross Barnett, a white supremacist who happens to be Governor of Mississippi. Last week Barnett got a new blunderbuss to crush the forces of darkness: he took over the selection of all public-school textbooks in Mississippi. No other U.S. Governor can boast such power.

Under the old (and typically American) system, Mississippi's state superintendent of education appointed committees of teachers to recommend books to local school boards. But the system seemed perilous to the Daughters of the American Revolution, who found the words of many a "subversive" author passing before the eyes of schoolchildren. Among such authors (most of them in standard anthologies of American literature): Novelist Jack London, Playwright Arthur Miller, Poets Carl Sandburg and Archibald MacLeish.

When the D.A.R. protested to former Governor J. P. Coleman in 1958, he defended the book-buying system and managed to keep it intact. When Governor Barnett took office last January, he agreed with the D.A.R., as well as with the equally agitated American Legion and Citizens' Councils.

Up before the state house of representatives last week was a senate-approved bill empowering the Governor to appoint four members of each seven-man committee in some 40 categories of books. (The Governor already heads a state board that buys books chosen by the schools.) "Clean up our textbooks," urged Barnett. "Our children must be properly informed of the Southern and true American way of life."

Legislators pointed out that the Governor's appointees need not even be educators. Said one house member: "You are setting into motion the greatest juggernaut of thought control ever devised by man." But the majority ruled. By a vote of 82 to 44, the house sent on the bill for Barnett's signature.

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