Walker v. Kansas City Star Co., 51705
| Decision Date | 11 July 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 1,No. 51705,51705,1 |
| Citation | 406 S.W.2d 44 |
| Parties | Edwin A. WALKER, Appellant, v. The KANSAS CITY STAR COMPANY, a corporation, and Associated Press, Respondents |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
James W. Jeans, Jeans & Boudoures, St. Louis, Clyde J. Watts, Oklahoma City, Okl., for appellant.
David R. Hardy, Charles L. Bacon, John T. Martin, Robert B. Olsen, Kansas City, Shook, Hardy, Ottman, Mitchell & Bacon, Kansas City, Watson, Ess, Marshall & Enggas, Kansas City of counsel, for respondent.
J. D. James, David R. Odegard, Houts, James, McCanse & Larison, Kansas City, for defendant-respondent Associated Press.
HIGGINS, Commissioner.
Edwin A. Walker sued The Kansas City Star and Associated Press for $500,000 actual and $500,000 punitive damages. The trial court sustained defendants' motions to dismiss.
Plaintiff's petition charged that 'defendants caused to be published and did publish' in the October 1, 1962, edition of the Kansas City Star and the October 1 and 2, 1962, editions of the Kansas City Times, the following articles (from the transcript):
'TROOPS INTO RIOTING AT OLE MISS.
NATIONAL GUARDSMEN ARRIVE AT CAMPUS TO QUELL VIOLENCE IN WHICH FRENCH NEWSMAN IS SLAIN.--OUTBREAK OCCURS DESPITE THE PRESIDENT'S PLEA FOR PEACE. MANY SHOTS FIRED.--OFFICERS BEAT OFF STUDENT CHARGES.--ONE LED BY GENERAL WALKER.--SEVERAL HURT IN WILD DISORDER.
Bulletin.
Washington (AP)--Army Headquarters received word from Mississippi early today that about 200 persons have joined the rioting mob and that the situation on the University of Mississippi campus at Oxford was 'very bad.' Automatic weapons fire was being aimed at the registration building.
(By The Star's Leased Wire Services.) Oxford, Miss.--A reporter was killed and at least nine other persons injured--four by shotgun blasts--in rioting on the University of Mississippi campus last night after James Meredith, Negro, arrived to enroll.
National guardsmen have arrived at the Ole Miss campus to quell the rioting.
Two battalions of military police left Memphis, Tenn. by truck convoy early today for Oxford.
At the same time, the Army announced that 1,100 combat troops from Ft. Benning, Ga., had been ordered to go directly to Oxford.
Dead was Paul Guihard, a correspondent for Agence French Presse and The London Daily Sketch.
He was first reported to have died of a heart attack in the rioting, but later accounts were that his body was found beside a women's dormitory with a gunshot wound in the back.
REPORTER IS SHOT.
Shotgun blasts from the mob wounded three marshals and an Associated Press reporter, Bill Crider. Crider suffered a slight wound in the back.
One of the marshals was in serious condition from a shotgun blast which struck him in the neck.
Four other marshals and one student were injured by clubs, stones and broken bottles as the riot continued.
Five highway patrolmen also were reported injured.
Some adults mixed with the students, protesting the admittance of the Negro to the all white university.
Who fired the shots was not known, but the marshals said they had done no shooting. They used tear gas against the mob, but it kept milling around the campus, with no sign of going home.
The rioting erupted after massive federal forces overpowered state resistance and moved Meredith on campus. Students and other youths rioted in waves.
The rampaging mob of white youths charged a line of federal marshals twice, despite Gov. Ross Barnett's indirect admission that he was giving up physical resistance in Mississippi's battle to keep the 29-year-old Negro out of Ole Miss.
The 64-year-old governor, who swore he would go to jail rather than see Meredith in Ole Miss, said in Jackson that Mississippi was 'completely' surronded' (sic) and 'physically overpowered.'
'The federal marshals blasted back at the rioting youths with tear gas--stopping two charges and breaking up a rampage of vandalism.
WALKER IS LEADER.
Former Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker led one of the charges.
Flying bottles, stones and bricks left scores bleeding and hurt.
A marshal clubbed a white student entering the dormitory where Meredith was housed. Students hooted: 'One Nigger, one dormitory.' Many of the students packed their clothes and left rather than stay in the dormitory with the Negro.
Even as the youths stormed the marshals the first time, President Kennedy addressed himself to the Ole Miss students in a nation-wide broadcast.
'Your honor and the honor of the university are at stake,' the President said.
It wasn't known whether he was aware of the rioting as he spoke.
USE A BULLDOZER.
The rioting students got themselves mechanized for the third outburst--going after the marshals in front of the administration building with a bulldozer.
Albert Taylor, A.U.S. marshal from Chula Vista, Calif., told how the bulldozer attack was repelled.
He said he and other marshals first saw the machine when it was about 300 feet from the administration building.
CLING TO VEHICLE.
'There must have been a mob behind it,' Taylor said.
A fire truck trailed the bulldozer. When the truck stalled, after circling the building several times, marshals pulled four persons from the vehicle and--according to one report--began roughing up the four.
'As the rioting increased, the President and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, attorney general, kept a vigil at the White House, receiving direct telephone reports from official sources in Oxford.
The second wave of rioting, led by General Walker, took the form of a direct charge on the marshals holding guard posts shoulder to shoulder outside the administration building.
IN ARKANSAS CASE.
Walker, an outspoken advocate of Mississippi resistance to federal court desegregation orders, commanded the 101st airborne in the Little Rock desegregation in 1957. Now retired, he says he was 'on the wrong side' then.
The students rushed the marshals with bricks and soft drink bottles flying. Some of them wore gas masks. But the marshals turned them back with their gas launchers.
The first outburst of violence, instead of taking the form of a charge, appeared more like sporadic outbursts of vandalism.
The mob of students--most of them returning only yesterday from an offcampus football game--grew steadily as the word spread in late afternoon that marshals had ringed the administration building.
By early last night--when Meredith arrived, the President spoke, and the governor issued his statement--an estimated 2,500 students were standing around, some jeering, some joking, some just watching. Then they got rowdy.
CAMERA IS BROKEN.
They jumped a news photographer and smashed his camera. They threw stones and soft drink bottles and flipped lighted cigarettes--all in the direction of the marshals.
They attacked a car with out-of-state license plates, smashed the windows and sent a man and women fleeing.
'Then they turned on one of the army trucks standing by--part of the marshals' convoy--and took a cap off the auxiliary gasoline tank and threw a piece of flaming newspaper at the rising fumes. Their attempt to set the truck afire didn't work, but it triggered the marshals to action.
The officers donned gas masks and started firing tear gas pellets--first at the students they thought were the leaders, then at everybody in sight.
Tear gas fogged up much of the campus, sending students running away with handkerchiefs over their faces. And the rowdy students scattered.'
COMMANDING GENERAL SAYS 'THE AREA IS SECURE' AFTER 11 HOURS OF RIOTING--EPITHETS AT THE NEW STUDENT.
CHARGED IN REBELLION.
FORMER GENERAL, WHO LED TROOPS AT LITTLE ROCK IN 1957, FACES A SERIES OF U.S. CHARGES IN OXFORD, MISS. DISTURBANCE. LED AN ATTACK. HE ALSO WAS ON THE SCENE IN
THE TOWN TODAY SHORTLY BEFORE NEW OUTBREAK.
(By the Star's Leased Wire Services.)
Edwin A. Walker, former major general, was arrested today at Oxford, Mississippi, and charged with inciting an insurrection, Robert F. Kennedy, attorney general, announced in Washington.
Walker, who commanded the troops ordered by former President Eisenhower into Little Rock in the 1957 integration crisis there, appeared as the leader of rioters on the Ole Miss campus last night. He was quoted as telling students,
The attorney general announced these charges had been filed against the former general:
Conspiracy to incite a rebellion or insurrection.
Conspiracy to hinder federal officers in the performance of their duties.
Assaulting a federal officer.
Justice department officials said the conspiracy to incide (sic) rebellion charges carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $20,000.
Execution of such a conspiracy, as distinguished from the act of conspiring, involves a maximum...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Chapski v. Copley Press
...or variations thereof remain the law in only a few States. See Monnin v. Wood (1974), 86 N.M. 460, 525 P.2d 387; Walker v. Kansas City Star Co. (Mo.1966), 406 S.W.2d 44; Steffes v. Crawford (1963), 143 Mont. 43, 386 P.2d 842; Becker v. Toulmin (1956), 165 Ohio 549, 138 N.E.2d 391; Tulsa Tri......
-
Tuite v. Corbitt
...Chapski, 92 Ill.2d at 349, 65 Ill.Dec. 884, 442 N.E.2d 195 (citing Monnin v. Wood, 86 N.M. 460, 525 P.2d 387 (1974), Walker v. Kansas City Star Co., 406 S.W.2d 44 (Mo.1966), Steffes v. Crawford, 143 Mont. 43, 386 P.2d 842 (1963), Becker v. Toulmin, 165 Ohio St. 549, 138 N.E.2d 391 (1956), a......
-
Nazeri v. Missouri Valley College
...Langworthy v. Pulitzer Pub. Co., 368 S.W.2d 385, 388 (Mo.1963), and construed in their most innocent sense, Walker v. Kansas City Star Co., 406 S.W.2d 44, 51 (Mo.1966). But other precedents hold that the alleged defamatory words must be considered in context, giving them their plain and ord......
-
Cervantes v. Time, Inc.
...364 Mo. 32, 258 S.W.2d 583 (1953). This privilege is an affirmative defense which must be proven by the defendant. Walker v. Kansas City Star Co., Mo., 406 S.W.2d 44 (1966). See also Pulliam v. Bond, Mo., 406 S.W.2d 635 7 In his Reply Brief on this point the mayor asserts that most of the o......
-
The Crisis of June 2020: the Case of the Retired Generals and Admirals and the Clarion Calls of Their Critics in Lex Non Scripta (historic) Perspective
...(1967). [274]See, e.g., Walker v. Courier-Journal & Louisville Times Co., 368 F.2d 189 (6th Cir. 1966); Walker v. Kansas City Star Co., 406 S.W.2d 44 (Mo. [275] Anthony Lewis, Mississippi Aides Blamed by U.S. Officials for Riot, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 2, 1962, at 1; Walker Seized at Roadblock, MI......