On May 4, 1966 – exactly four years before the infamous incident at Kent State University, when national guard members shot into a crowd of students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four students and injuring nine others – the University of Memphis saw its own altercation between anti-war protesters and pro-war students. Staff members of the anti-war newspaper Logos were confronted by students while distributing their publication and chased across campus by the crowd.
This comparatively tame event, however, unraveled into a much more controversial story when reporters for the school newspaper — at that time called The Tiger Rag — came in the next day to write about the so-called “Logos Riot” and found that a special issue of their newspaper had already been published on the matter. The four-page issue contained a handful of articles decrying the breakdown of order on campus and attempting to link the Logos staff with several Communist organizations and activists. The only story with a byline, a play-by-play account of the Logos incident, was attributed to Kaye Pullen, a special assignment reporter at The Tiger Rag.
“I remember that the writing didn’t seem like the kind of thing they typically would write,” said Jim Willis, an alum of UofM – at that time Memphis State University — who served on the paper’s staff from 1964 to 1968.
Among the stories included were a criticism of the Free Speech Movement, a rebuke of “mob rule” at MSU, four articles investigating the Logos staff and their alleged links to groups with
“Communist sympathies” and a letter from the MSU Young Conservatives Club president to the editor, answered by former editor Michael Stewart.
Other than the front-page story by Pullen and letter to the editor, all stories were published without attribution, and the administration never revealed who wrote the articles or why.
“Everybody was tight-lipped, and nobody would talk about it,” said Willis. “At the time I didn’t like that, but I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it.”
One speculation is that Dr. Cecil C. Humphreys, the president of the university at the time, bowed to pressure from the FBI to contain the incident and discourage students from sympathizing with the student activists. Willis said Humphreys, a former FBI agent himself, was usually very open and forthcoming with the newspaper staff — with the exception of the Logos incident — and the administration and paper rarely clashed on issues.
J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director throughout the Civil Rights movement and most of the Vietnam War, is reported to have meddled with activist groups throughout the 60s. He had agents infiltrate such groups and famously surveilled known leaders of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There is also evidence that he monitored many student organizations and protests, as Willis witnessed firsthand.
“I know that the FBI took an interest in that Logos fracas on the campus,” he said.
Shortly after the Logos incident, Willis encountered a photographer friend in the campus photo services department printing out hundreds of pictures from the day of the Logos episode to be sent to the FBI. However, he never found out why the FBI wanted the photos or what they did with them.
After graduating from MSU, Willis went on to have a long career in the newspaper business, working for the Memphis Press-Scimitar and the Commercial Appeal, and ultimately serving as editor and president of The Birmingham (Alabama) Post-Herald. When thinking back on his time at the Tiger Rag, Willis said that, although the administration was “impossibly difficult to deal with,” the paper never had any real conflicts with the administration, and that none came close to some of the issues the Daily Helmsman has faced in recent years.
The issues Willis mentioned focused on the 2012 clash between UofM administrators and Chelsea Boozer, the Helmsman’s managing editor at the time, over cuts made to the paper’s budget in response to certain investigative reporting. The incident gained the interest of national student press rights groups and led to a reevaluation of the relationship between the student paper and the school.
However different the situations were between Boozer’s battle and Willis’ speculation about his Tiger Rag tenure, his stance on student press remains the same.
“A student newspaper should be independent of the university,” Willis said.
