The racial-awareness movement on the Mizzou campus is real, valid and honorable

Anticipating the evil about to descend on Columbia on a frigid February day in 2014, University of Missouri students Alix Carruth and Kelaney Lakers orchestrated a plan to form a peaceful “human wall,” both as a buffer zone and a rebuttal to the attack.

So it was that catty-corner from where a hate group from Topeka set up at Stadium and Providence roads, thousands of MU students, Columbia residents and visitors merged and turned their backs on the invasion.

As far as the eye could see east on Stadium, they stood up and were counted for a black man, Michael Sam, who days before had publicly disclosed that he was gay — an unprecedented action for someone aspiring to be drafted by the NFL.

A spirited camaraderie coalesced in the diverse crowd, which at times swayed arm-in-arm by the dozens or intermittently chanted “M-I-Z ... Z-O-U” or sang fight songs.

“Times are changing,” Emilee Sherertz, then a freshman, said that day. “And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be today.”

If you were there that day, maybe you think of that every time you arrive at that intersection now.

And if you were there that day, you might still find hope in the unseen today at MU.

The school is reeling in racial strife, along with the stunning news on Friday that coach Gary Pinkel has lymphoma, as the Tigers, 4-5, come to Kansas City to play Brigham Young, 7-2, on Saturday night at Arrowhead Stadium.

Mayhem has been ruling in the wake of protests over recently reported racial incidents (ladled over a long history of such tensions) and a gulf of leadership that led to the resignation of MU President Tim Wolfe on the same day that UMC Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin was swept out over a conflict with faculty.

But it’s crucial to remember this amid the furor.

Messy as it might be at times, even if the true solutions might be imprecise, this movement is entirely honorable and substantial.

If you somehow scoff at its validity, you just haven’t spoken to, or listened to, or known African-Americans who went to MU, or go there now.

If you insist on doubting it, what does it tell you that the activism inspired someone to drive a pickup truck through the middle of campus unfurling a Confederate flag, and that there have been at least three arrests made in the last few days on suspicion of related threats?

Besides, any of us who aren’t living in the skins of African-Americans only are speculating about something we can’t understand and can only hope to empathize with.

And that’s only if you try.

Mizzou is so much more than this amplified microcosm, of course.

It’s a terrific institution in a vibrant community that draws remarkable people from all walks of life and parts of the globe.

At the same time, it also reflects the complicated dynamics of being the flagship institution in a conflicted state that touches eight others.

All of which makes it a place that at once can suffer from racial turbulence and yet protect and defend Michael Sam and elect a black man (Payton Head) and black woman (Brenda Smith-Lezana) student body president and vice-president.

How can that be?

Well, it’s just like Walt Whitman wrote: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”

If you love Mizzou, yes, it might hurt to make the concession that the multitudes include some rotten people.

Maybe it’s more of a challenge to reconcile since its recent woes are rooted more in acts of institutional omission (a failure to convey sincere concern and commitment to making the climate better) than commission … and because MU hardly has a patent on that.

“This story is not just something that happens here,” Head told The Washington Post in September. “It’s not a Mizzou issue. It’s a societal issue.”

But the flip side is this: If you truly love MU, then you should want to see it doing all it can to be a place that’s desirable for all.

That’s why it’s been so dispiriting to see the bedlam compounded by missteps of the movement that cost it considerable goodwill.

The false moves raised eyebrows of even some who are sympathetic, and it lent comfort to cynics.

Amid known threats and an atmosphere teeming with fear, for instance, Head posted on his Facebook page an unsubstantiated warning that “the KKK has been confirmed to be sighted on campus.”

Head, whose account of being called a racial slur in September was one of the catalysts of the crusade, later retracted his words and apologized.

Then there was the inflammatory behavior of assistant communications professor Melissa Click, who was instrumental in the bizarre harassment of media in the same public space she had beckoned media to days before.

Click offered an apology, but the healing thing for her to do would be to resign for the sake of a movement that lost sympathy with that fiasco and needs to disassociate itself with such distracting actions.

So now MU will try to slog forward under the leadership of African-American interim president Mike Middleton, a long-time MU administrator who had retired on Aug. 31.

And maybe, as a wise friend of mine who grew up there hopes, one day we’ll able to look back on the recent events in Columbia as an incubator of change instead of a simmering center of crisis.

That is wishful thinking, of course.

No doubt this will be untidy and painful for a while to come, in part because no matter what tangible demands the protesters seek and gain the real battle is with the shadowy forces of hatred.

Lest you abandon hope, though, let us not forget about something that not so long ago prevailed in the collective DNA and heart of this student body and supporters around Columbia.

Confronted with the very face of bigotry on that cold February day in 2014, they stood for all that was right and good.

That, too, is part of MU’s history and legacy as it stands at the crossroads of its future — hoping it can overcome some day.

This story was originally published November 13, 2015 at 5:47 PM with the headline "The racial-awareness movement on the Mizzou campus is real, valid and honorable."