The book The Battle of Ole Miss is a nonfiction history published in 2010. Author Frank Lambert was a college professor (Purdue University) at the time of publication.

The Battle of Ole Miss is an important historical event that took place in 1962. Ole Miss, of course, refers to the University of Mississippi. The battle that took place there in 1962 was a confrontation between the people of Mississippi and the national government in Washington, D.C. The reason for the confrontation was the admission of an African American, James Meredith, to the university. Meredith was the first African American to ever attend Ole Miss. In conservative, racist 1962 Mississippi, his enrollment caused a riot.

The Riot’s Results

Two people died. Dozens suffered injuries. All night on September 30 and October 1, 1962, students and nonstudents alike in Mississippi attacked U.S. marshals dedicated to protecting Meredith’s right to register and attend Ole Miss. Mississippi’s racist governor, Ross Barnett, had preached defiance of the national government. The people of Mississippi responded by flocking to the university to do battle with the feds.

Calm prevailed—eventually. The marshals and law enforcement restored order the next day. But for one horrific night, the nation saw just how far the racist population of Mississippi would go to defend segregation.

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Was The Battle of Ole Miss a Helpful Book?

Sadly, no. It was a deeply flawed book. The greatest flaw was simple. The book wasn’t about the Battle of Ole Miss, despite the title.

What the author did describe was the conditions prevailing in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s. And Lambert did so reasonably well. But I picked up the book wanting to learn about the Battle of Ole Miss. The title claimed the book was about Ole Miss. Instead, what I got was a book with one chapter about what happened on the fateful night in 1962 and seven chapters about what led up to it and what followed.

This is not acceptable. The title should reflect the content of the book. This one doesn’t. In this respect, it’s like another nonfiction book I reviewed recently, Killing for Coal. That book claimed to be about the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 but was really about general coal mining in Colorado at the turn of the twentieth century.

I suppose if I were a general reader rather than a history PhD this approach might be more helpful. But I wanted to read about Meredith. I wanted analysis of what the Kennedys were doing, what Ross Barnett was doing, the events of the riot, and so on. I didn’t get very much of that despite what the title promised.

So, if you want to know about conditions in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s, you might enjoy this book. If you want to understand more about the differences between blacks and whites in the Magnolia State at that time, you’ll probably find this book useful. But if you want to know more about James Meredith’s admission in 1962, look elsewhere.

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Other Flaws in The Battle of Ole Miss

The subtitle was also problematic: Civil Rights vs States’ Rights. As you know well by now if you’re a regular reader of my blog, when a Southerner talks about states’ rights, it’s a code word for discrimination. I certainly never read of Southerners complaining about the national government when it funds an interstate highway or puts a military base in the South, thereby helping the Southern economy. They only scream states’ rights when the national government forces them to stop discriminating.

So, Ole Miss wasn’t about states’ rights. It was about segregation. Call it what it was.

Yes, true, that might require some judgment and critical commentary on some of the participants. Fine. Call them what they were: racists and segregationists.

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