Becoming involved in the civil rights movement
Murphy describes how he became involved in the civil rights movement. He was teaching constitutional law at the University of Mississippi, the only accredited law school in the state, and found himself teaching material that contradicted many southerners' beliefs about states' rights. When influential Mississippians tried to force Murphy out, he had to choose whether to change his approach to law. He chose not to, and suddenly, Murphy was a civil rights activist.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with William Patrick Murphy, January 17, 1978. Interview B-0043. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- SEAN DEVEREUX:
-
I'm interested in the general question of what motivated you
to take the stand that you took at that time, whether it was a question
of your academic freedom or a vindication of law and order or whether
you felt there was specific injustice being done in the South in the
separate school systems, or how exactly you thought about it if you
thought about it at the time… In other words, when
Brown v. the Board of Education came out, you, I
notice in your review of it, were critical of the decision in some ways,
but you ended up defending the case ultimately.
- WILLIAM PATRICK MURPHY:
-
I never really thought of it in terms of taking a stand on anything. It
all started because I was teaching the course in Constitutional Law. And
I taught the course basically the way it was taught all over the
country, the way I would have taught it anywhere else in the country,
and that assumes that Supreme Court decisions are law and at some point,
to some extent, ought to be complied with. And so I never really
consciously took a stand on anything. I started out just teaching a
normal Constitutional Law course. And the only thing that made that
unusual or got me in hot water was that that normal approach toward
constitutional law and the authority of the Supreme Court was contrary
to the basic approach which these Citizens Council types took. And that
was that the Supreme Court didn't have the authority, and
that there wasn't any duty to comply. So
I started out, really, in complete innocence, just doing what a
constitutional law professor would have done anywhere in the country,
and the only thing that made it unusual was the time and the place. They
apparently wanted the Con Law course taught kind of like it would have
been taught at a Citizens Council rally.
[Laughter]
And I wasn't about to do that. But I
didn't start out to take a stand or be a hero or anything
like that. I got in hot water initially because of the way I taught the
course.
- SEAN DEVEREUX:
-
Were there other people teaching Con Law?
- WILLIAM PATRICK MURPHY:
-
No, at that time we had a very small faculty and a relatively small
student body. And I was the only Constitutional Law teacher.
- SEAN DEVEREUX:
-
So in effect you were the only one in the State of Mississippi.
- WILLIAM PATRICK MURPHY:
-
That's right, because it was the only accredited law school in
the State of Mississippi, and almost all of the people who become
practicing lawyers and judges and influential politicians in Mississippi
at that time went to the Ole Miss Law School. So I can see—I
could begin to see even in the late fifties—why, from the
point of view of my critics, I was what they called me, a
"dangerous man," because the Ole Miss Law School was
the throat through which the future lawyers and judges and leaders of
the state went. And here was this guy Murphy up there who was teaching
them things that were subversive of the Mississippi way of life. I can
understand why they thought I was dangerous. But it didn't
occur to me initially that I was taking a stand on anything, and I
certainly didn't set out to be a hero or a martyr or
anything. But it started out in the classroom, and then
it did go beyond the classroom but still well within the
academic area. I began to publish some book reviews. And then when I
wrote this doctoral dissertation, which was a comparative analysis of
the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution and which really was
contrary to the whole concept of state sovereignty, I began to publish
it as a series of articles in the Mississippi Law
Journal. That engendered some opposition.
- SEAN DEVEREUX:
-
But that was equally accidental.
- WILLIAM PATRICK MURPHY:
-
Yes, I didn't set out to become a cause
celebre in Mississippi. Nothing was ever farther from my mind. I
later compared myself with the innocent bystander who gets bit by a mad
dog.
[Laughter]
I had no earthly idea that it would end up the way it did when I
began to pursue my teaching and my writing activities. It just happened
that the way I taught and what I wrote turned out to be directly
contrary to what many influential Mississippians believed, and so they
decided they had to get rid of me. And I had to decide whether I was
going to keep on writing and teaching the way that I thought I ought to,
or whether I was going to knuckle under to these people, and at that
point I did have to take a stand.