LA ICE Riots a Replay of Ole Miss Riots of 1962
June 7-9 in LA Was Much More Insurrection-y Than J-6 in DC
“A once great American city, Los Angeles,” posted President Trump on Sunday afternoon, June 8, “has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.”
The temptation is to compare the riots in Los Angeles at the Ice Detention facility to the events in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. That parallel doesn’t really work. The vast majority of the J-6ers came to support the president, protest a stolen election, hear some speeches, and go home. If they came armed with pepper spray, as some did, it was to deter the attacks by Antifa that marred the previous two pro-Trump rallies in DC post-election.
The violence started when the under-trained Capitol Police began lobbing munitions into a rowdy but still peaceful crowd on the Capitol’s west side. What followed was general mayhem, lots of pushing and shoving, but almost no attempts to inflict serious harm on law enforcement officers. The Capitol, once open, was ripe for vandalism, but almost no vandalism occurred, and the worst injury any cop suffered was the loss of a fingertip, likely from mishandling munitions.
To justify the “insurrection” label they applied to the disorder before that fateful afternoon was through, the Democrats had to invent the murder by fire extinguisher of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. In fact, Sicknick died of an unrelated stroke on January 7.
Those looking for a meaningful historical precedent for the LA mayhem should check out William Doyle’s eye-opening book, An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962. In Oxford, as in Los Angeles, when local authorities proved unable or unwilling to suppress a mounting insurrection, the President of the United States exercised his legitimate authority to restore order. As Trump noted, “These lawless riots only strengthen our resolve.”
If there was a difference between the riots of 1962 and those of 2025 it was that President Kennedy and his Attorney General Brother Robert Kennedy played much more fast and loose with the rules than President Trump has or will. Unlike Trump, they did not send the troops into protect federal facilities but rather to enforce a Supreme Court decision at a state facility, the University of Mississippi—legal, yes, but much more intrusive and unwelcome.
In Mississippi, the Gavin Newsom role was played by the waffling Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. The real difference between them, although each proved equally oily, is that Newsom has better hair. Then, too, both feared their own mobs and responded accordingly, but Barnett had much broader local support. Kennedy’s insertion of federal troops into Oxford ran a much greater risk of a mini-civil war than Trump’s insertion of troops into Los Angeles.
The protest at Ole Miss was sparked by the admission of Air Force veteran James Meredith, the school’s first black student. After several attempts to enroll were rebuffed, Meredith showed up on September 30, 1962, escorted by two dozen US Marshals and backed up by several federal hundred law enforcement officers including border patrol agents and prison guards, few of whom had any training in quelling riots.
As the evening wore on, thousands of protestors gathered around the Lyceum, the administration building where the federal agents had gathered. As in Los Angeles, local authorities played to the mob. In Mississippi, they withdrew the state and local police that had been keeping outsiders at bay. Said one state senator, a Barnett ally, "You have occupied this university, and now you can have it."[
At 11 p.m. Barnett declared, “We will never surrender!” Then all hell broke loose the way it has in Los Angeles these last few days. Unlike the J6ers, but like the Antifa mobs, the rioters hurled rocks, Molotov cocktails, acid bottles and whatever came to hand at the agents. They flipped cars and burned them. And again, unlike the J6ers, many of these real insurrectionists came armed with guns and used them. Before the long night was through 160 agents would be injured, nearly 30 of them shot.
Running out of options, President Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 and ordered the U.S. Army to suppress the riot. As Doyle explains, the Army was not easily mustered especially since Robert Kennedy, way out of his depth, assumed responsibility for the mustering.
The heroes of Doyle’s book were the members of the Mississippi National Guard, good old boys who signed up for a mix of reasons unsuspecting that one day they would have to square off against their friends and neighbors. Kennedy had federalized the Guard as a caution two days before Meredith’s planned arrival. They were nearby, but many doubted they would show up when called. Fortunately for the university, the state, and the country they did. Had they not, it is likely the rioters would have overrun the Lyceum and killed the federal agents within.
The first US Army troops arrived early the next morning. By midday, October 1, the rioting had been quelled. Unlike in LA, the national media fully endorsed Kennedy’s actions, however bungled they were. Kennedy Derangement Syndrome was largely limited to the South.
As former Major General Edwin Walker could attest, Robert Kennedy had only a passing attachment to civil rights. Kennedy had Walker, a Texan who had been agitating on campus but not rioting, seized off the streets without due process and committed to a federal prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation.
The not yet fully corrupted ACLU intervened on Walker’s behalf and had him sprung after 5 days. Walker returned to Dallas where, in April 1963, fledgling assassin Lee Harvey Oswald took a potshot at him and missed by inches.
Later that same year, James Meredith graduated with a degree in political science. After leading a civil personal civil rights march and getting shot for his efforts, Meredith went on to get a law degree from Columbia University. After Columbia, Meredith got involved in Republican politics and served for several years as a domestic adviser to arch conservative Republican Senator Jesse Helms, flummoxing the media.
Meredith, who will turn 92 this month, has largely been abandoned by a self-parodying civil rights establishment. As to Los Angeles, who knows?
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Didn't Kennedy also get the 101st Airborne involved?
I have said in the past few days that the Mississippi event is exactly the precedent for the current LA riot. A local government unwilling to submit to federal authority and standing by while federal agents are attacked.
Federal authority must be clearly demonstrated.
Like President Kennedy in 1962 at Ole Miss, President Trump faces down an insurrection by feral hateful mobs in Los Angeles. But unlike JFK, Donald Trump acted decisively at the outset to deal with the insurrectionists. Mr. Trump federalized the California National Guard and sent them to assist the LAPD in quelling the riots that were springing up in LA. Liberal and leftist activists and militant groups such as Antifa, were out in force “protesting” ICE raids in LA to arrest and deport illegal immigrants. But this quickly turned into ICE agents being physically attacked, stores being vandalized, police cars being hit with a rain of large rocks, cars being set on fire, and the 101 freeway in LA being shut down and taken over.
Donald Trump waisted no time in getting the California National Guard out there to guard federal buildings and protect the people of LA. Meanwhile, on January 6th nothing close to that event happened. Mostly peaceful protesters entered the capital none were armed nor did they seek to overthrow the government. Not a single Capitol Police Officer was killed and the only injury suffered was the loss of a finger tip due to an accident with their gun. There was a small minority of the protesters who were hooligans and engaged in vandalism and assaulted law enforcement. But most of the J6 protesters treated the capital with great awe and reverence and treated the D.C. Police with respect. Ashli Babbitt was actually filmed punching a guy out because he was trying to break a window at the capital.
I don’t see anyone in LA practicing any sort of restrain. Ross Barnett much like Gavin Newsom today, refused to control the violence on campus at Ole Miss which has been surrounded by angry local people and white supremacists due to the registering of James Meredith a black Air Force veteran as a student. Like in LA, violence quickly broke out and the Battle of Ole Miss was on to see who would win out, integration or segregation. 160 U.S. Marshals sent to quell the uprising were injured during the violence that followed and two men French-British journalist Paul Guihard and jukebox repairman Ray Gunter were killed.
Meredith had U.S. Marshals, Border Patrol agents, and prison guards around him and Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach on his side and he still couldn’t get in to register. President Kennedy gave a speech that day thanking the Mississippi state government for their help in registering Meredith. Only to look like a total fool when his advisors informed him Barnett and Mississippi state officials had done no such thing. JFK only then took action to put a stop to this madness. He ordered the previously federalized Mississippi State National Guard to assist in quelling the riots. No one was sure whether these good ole boys who joined for a wide variety reasons would even show up but they did. Kennedy also invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 and sent in the U.S. Army and the riots came to end and James Meredith was able to register.
The Mississippi State National Guard are the clear heroes of this story and they are to be saluted for their service! 🇺🇸🫡 Unlike Trump, Kennedy waited too long to do something and as a result things got even worse. He and RFK got played by Ross Barnett. It wasn’t their finest hour to say the least. It should be noted the Kennedy Brothers considered civil rights a minor issue at the time and concentrated first and foremost on the Cold War.
JFK’s record on civil rights was mixed and RFK had no interest in or understanding of, the issue until later in life. As for James Meredith he went on to live a full and happy life where he graduated from both Ole Miss and Columbia, survived an attempt to kill him while doing a solo march to bring attention to racism in the South and encouraging voter registration after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, he later continued his march this time with 15,000 people joining him and got 4,000 African-Americans to register to vote, and had a long, successful career in Republican politics. He worked for North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms a prominent Southern conservative Republican, which flummoxed the left and the legacy civil rights organizations given that Helms was considered a racist by many.
On the subject of Senator Helms, he is a very misunderstood figure and was in truth, a good and honorable man who wasn’t racist in the slightest. Helms supported equality under the law for all Americans, he simply believed the individual Southern states should handle desegregation not the federal government. But when the civil rights laws were passed, he obeyed and honored them. He was raised to respect all people and rejected the doctrine of white supremacy.
As manager at WRAL-TV he hired minorities and women to work for him in responsible positions and proposed setting up a department at WRAL to train minority candidates. He praised prominent black figures like Rev. Leon Sullivan and Asa Spaulding who’s success showed that dreams matched with diligence could make any American successful. He curiously also praised a young man by the name of Harvey Gantt in an editorial for integrating Clemson University, who would go on to run against him for his Senate seat. He hired African-Americans to work for him and gave his black constituents the same level of attention he did his white constituents.
He also voted to confirm black conservatives who were nominated for cabinet positions or the Supreme Court such as Claude Allen, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Clarence Thomas. He just voted against LIBERAL black nominees. People often bring up when he said to Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun that he would sing “I Wish I Was in Dixie” to make her cry. She responded “Senator you could sing Rock of the Ages, and it would make me cry.” It was a good natured, joking exchange.
Being that he was a conservative Republican, Meredith was ostracized by the legacy civil rights organizations and they acted as if he never existed. He’d joined the “wrong side” so they in effect disowned him. But Meredith never cared and was fiercely independent. He endorsed both Ross Barnett and David Duke. These endorsements were done not because he was a “self-hating black person” or some such nonsense but because he wanted racism to be out in the open where he could confront it. He sought to expose Barnett and Duke’s bigotry to the light of day which even if they had been elected, would’ve ended their newfound political careers pretty quickly.