Back to Mississippi 

photo: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr , Photo: Courtesy of David Stewart 

Glebe residents David and Debbie Stewart travelled to Holly Springs, Mississippi in January to revisit Rust College, a historically Black college and the scene of David’s 1964 support of efforts to pursue racial justice in America. 

Photos: Debbie Stewart 

Back to Mississippi 

By David Stewart 

In 1965, long-time Glebe resident David Stewart travelled from Michigan State University to Mississippi’s Rust College in support of the civil rights movement in 1960s America. In this US election year, he returned to the College and learned what has change and what has not. 

This past January as we watched an old movie, Mississippi Burning, I told my wife Debby that the film brought back memories of the summer of 1965, when I taught science study skills to incoming freshmen at Rust College. 

Located in the northern hill country of Mississippi, this small, historically black college sits overlooking Holly Springs, an old plantation town of 6,000 residents of whom 83 per cent are black. The College was founded by the Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Church in 1866, immediately after the Civil War. Vice-President Kamala Harris, now running for president, is a graduate of a much larger historically black institution, Howard University in Washington, DC.  

I had for some time dreamed of going back to Holly Springs. Debby and I travelled there in May, a journey to celebrate my 80th birthday by revisiting my youthful experience. We also hoped to connect with people at today’s Rust College. 

In the cause of civil rights 

The story begins a few months earlier at Michigan State University (MSU) where I was a pre-med student and an editor of The State News, a daily student newspaper with a press run of 37,000 copies. It was a crucial time for the U.S. civil rights movement and our paper covered it heavily.  

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation and racial discrimination, but its enactment, of course, did not end either. So, in winter 1965, I helped organize a group of two dozen students aiming to contribute our help to the cause. We connected with Rust College which then had an enrolment of about 1,000 students. Our project was the first student-administered education outreach of its kind in the country. 

As part of our effort, we invited Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at MSU. On February 11, 1965, the university auditorium was filled. We charged admission of $1 and raised over $4,000 for our project. Dr. King spoke for an hour, speaking in a measured and deliberate manner at first, gradually increasing his cadence, then concluding with great passion and drama to resounding applause. He said: “We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish as fools.” And: “It may be that morality cannot be legislated, but behaviour can be regulated.” Six months later President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, allowing black people for the first time to vote in the south in significant numbers. It ended what Dr. King called the “complicated and absurd” literacy tests required for voter registration. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, a mere 55 miles north of Holly Springs. 

The struggle continues 

In the 59 years since my initial visit, Holly Springs has changed. A new interstate sweeps around the town. As in many small Ontario towns, the downtown seemed ghostly quiet. Holly Springs could fairly be described as a poor town in the poorest state in America. Still, while it’s different on the surface, whites still live in the nicest antebellum homes, some very grand. Blacks tend to have the menial jobs. A white shop clerk to whom I mentioned the Civil War corrected me, calling it “the War of Northern Aggression.” The town can also be violent. A man was shot and killed in the poor north end a day before we arrived.  

But now I could wander about at random. Back in 1965, any walk into the town meant going with a buddy and alerting others to our trip. I was warned not to stand in front of a window at night unless the curtain was pulled shut. Black students told me they had no use for Elvis Presley who was born nearby in Tupelo: “He never liked us black folks.” William Faulkner, who grew up and spent much of his life in nearby Oxford, Mississippi, was seen to drive his jeep wildly in the town and, I was told, “He was not at all sociable, and maybe drunk.” 

Dr. Robert Dixon, Rust College’s interim president, met with Debby and me for a good long chat about social change and civil rights. He recalled his own experience of registering to vote in Atlanta in the 1960s. He was asked to interpret passages in the Georgia Constitution. Later, at a Class of 1964 luncheon, we heard individual accounts of the struggle of black groups to advance themselves and to achieve full civil rights. Finally, we were invited to be Dr. Dixon’s guests on the stage for the Class of 2024 graduation ceremony. It was a true honour to be part of this group dedicated to the cause championed by Dr. King and so many others, before and since. 

Before leaving Rust College, I donated to their library collection eight original 19th- century newspapers printed in the American South. They contain advertisements of slave auctions and rewards for the capture of runaway slaves and of black soldiers serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. 

It’s different today. But Dr. King’s quest for equality, unequivocal and universal, continues.  

David Stewart is a long-time Glebe resident and medical doctor who is passionate about social justice and its history. He also collects original vintage newspapers, pre-1870.