Word: lott
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Most people earned roughly the same wages and lived in the same four- and five-room houses. "It was a society with almost no distinctions based on wealth or social standing," says Lott's friend Robert Khayat, who grew up in a neighboring town, went on to play pro football with the Washington Redskins and now serves as chancellor of Ole Miss...
There were, of course, many distinctions based on race, including the segregated schools that some of Lott's friends came to see as unjust. But Lott had enough trouble at home; he didn't need to stir up any more if it could be avoided. And in Pascagoula, it could. Most of his white classmates could say, as Lott does, that "race just wasn't that big an issue for me growing...
Both race and class became big issues, however, during Lott's years at Ole Miss, which had no black students when he arrived in 1959. There the student yearbook invoked the charms of "darkies singing softly in the moonlight" along the levee. Social life and student politics were dominated by the big fraternities and sororities, where Lott encountered sons and daughters of Delta planters who looked down not only on blacks but also on members of the smaller Greek organizations and the "independent" students who either couldn't get accepted into a fraternity or sorority or couldn't afford...
...Lott felt a kinship with members of the lower social orders at Ole Miss but characteristically did not express it by confronting the snobs and bigots. Instead he turned it to his political advantage. Even as he ingratiated himself with the big men and women on campus, Lott in his political campaigns lavished attention on the little people, stressing his roots as the son of a shipyard worker. Soon he had built himself another snaggletoothed majority, which helped win him election as president of the interfraternity council and as a cheerleader...
...During Lott's senior year at Ole Miss, on Sept. 30, 1962, armed U.S. marshals moved to install Air Force veteran James Meredith as its first black student. They were met by rock- and rifle-wielding students and other rowdies. In the violence that ensued, two were killed, scores injured and 150 arrested. A small band of white students publicly called for peaceful integration of the campus, but Lott was not among them. Nor was he among the rioters. He concentrated on keeping his frat brothers away from the violence, and he succeeded. "Yes, you could say that I favored...