“They Deserve a Stinging Defeat”: How Mississippi Newspapers' Coverage of the 1955 Junior Rose Bowl Protected the Closed Society

Abstract

In 1955, college sports teams in Mississippi refrained from playing integrated squads as a part of the social standard of segregation that dominated the Magnolia State. When the Jones County Junior College football team, with a record of 9–1, accepted a bid to play in the 1955 Junior Rose Bowl for the junior college national championship against the integrated Tartars of Compton (California) Junior College, Mississippi's journalists used their power and public forum to denounce the decision andprotect what James Silver has called the Closed Society. As demonstrated by this article, sports reporters neglected the social implications of participating in integrated athletics while some of Mississippi's more famed editors, including the Jackson Daily News' Frederick Sullens, attacked the Jones County contingent for its violation of the state's segregated way of life. This research argues that as a result, the silence and outrage in the press served as a deterrent for any and all efforts toward athletic-based integration, thus protecting the interests of pro-segregationists and leading to the eventual adoption of the unwritten law, an informal agreement between the state's college presidents and politicians that prohibited competition against integrated teams.