Education: Storm in Mississippi

On the campus of Jefferson Military College near Natchez, Miss, stands a monument inscribed: “Aaron Burr tried . . . under these oaks, 1807; Andrew Jackson camped here, 1812-1815; Jefferson Davis a student here, 1815; John James Audubon taught here, 1822; Lafayette reviewed cadets, 1825.” But in spite of its historic past, Jefferson Military College had fallen on hard times. Classroom walls were peeling ; desks were worn beyond repair. There were hardly enough students (48) in its high-school classes to keep the place going. Then, a few weeks ago, along came Judge George W. Armstrong.*

He was a distinguished-looking man of 84 who had once (1897) been a Texas county judge. The son of a Methodist minister, he was inordinately proud of his Scotch-Irish background and of the fact that his ancestors had fought in every North American war since the Revolution. At one time or another, he had run a chain of banks in Texas, a gas company, a cotton exporting firm, a flour mill, a steel company, a ranch and 38 Mississippi plantations on which he had found oil.

Tawdry Strings. Over the years moonfaced Judge Armstrong began to interest himself in other matters besides making money. He set up the Judge Armstrong Foundation and began writing pamphlets. One of them (Zionist Wall Street) was a bitter, loudmouthed attempt to prove that “Zionist Jews caused both world wars.”

The judge also wanted to repeal the 14th and 15th Amendments “thereby limiting the franchise to the nation’s white Americans.”

But the foundation was not enough for the judge. When he heard that Jefferson Military College was just about destitute, he offered to turn over the income of his oil-spouting lands. It was a handsome gift —somewhere between $5,000,000 and $50 million—but it was tied with tawdry strings. To qualify for it, the school was to pledge itself to exclude “any person of African or Asiatic origin.” It must promise to teach “through every medium possible . . . Christianity and the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin American races.” Jewish students would be banned, added an Armstrong spokesman, unless converted to Christianity. To nail it all down, old Judge Armstrong demanded a new five-man board of trustees, provided that he would name three of them himself. Among his candidates: old (75) George Van Horn Moseley, onetime major general in the U.S. Army, who had once trumpeted that “the finest type of Americanism can breed under [Fascist and Nazi] protection.”

“Stand on Freedom.” Last week, when it appeared that college authorities would accept the Armstrong gift, tiny Jefferson became big news for the first time since Lafayette. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith denounced the gift as “probably the most vicious use of wealth that our generation has seen.” The Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League petitioned Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson to remove the school from the list of preparatory schools whose curriculums are acceptable to West Point.

In the midst of the storm, Jefferson refused the judge’s conditions. Although “the college has even been maintained and operated exclusively for students of the white race,” it would not accept the endowment, said its trustees, if it had to teach the superiority of Anglo-Saxon and Latin American races or bar Jewish students. After that the judge withdrew his offer. Jefferson seemed back where he found it. “The school is operating at a loss,” said one of the trustees. “We plan to close … at the end of the year, under present conditions.”

Actually the prospect was not so gloomy as all that. This week a Houston, Texas manufacturer sent Jefferson $5,000 for its “stand on freedom of education.” Other gifts and pledges were arriving, all marked “no strings attached.”

* For news of another Armstrong, see Music.