Nation: What Good?

James Meredith knows what James Baldwin is writing about. Off for the holidays from the University of Mississippi campus, where he still suffers constant harassment from white students, Meredith last week visited Chicago—and scarcely had he arrived when he learned that several shotgun blasts had been fired at his father’s home in Kosciusko, Miss.

Nobody was hurt, but, Meredith insisted at a press conference, that was not the point. “I haven’t asked the local law enforcement to help because even if they knew who did it, they wouldn’t do anything,” he said. “But I’m not interested in what they do. I’m concerned that the Negro be treated like a human being and in his getting what is necessary to achieve this. It’s not just my problem; it’s America’s problem.”

Meredith was annoyed when newsmen asked him about his grades at Ole Miss. The university has said nothing, but rumors persist that Meredith is doing poorly. “You people don’t seem to understand,” Meredith said. “Maybe you don’t think it’s a very serious situation. I hear over the radio that my father’s house has been shot into and you ask me how my grades are. This is not a casual thing. My father is 71 years old. He has worked hard to send ten kids through school. It’s a very serious thing when my father can’t sleep in peace. What do you have to look forward to? What good was it for him to pay his debts, to lead an honest life—and then he can’t live in his home in peace without being shot at?”