Wallace privately signaled to the Kennedy administration his intention to avoid fomenting violence, such as had occurred in the September 1962 Battle of Oxford with the desegregation of the University of Mississippi. The head of the Alabama state police, Albert Lingo, who reported directly to Wallace, warned leaders of the Ku Klux Klan that their members would be arrested if they appeared in Tuscaloosa. Bull Connor, the race-baiting chief of Birmingham police, also told Klan members to spread word that Wallace wanted no crowds to gather in the town. And Wallace's speechwriter and top aide, Asa Carter, himself a top Klan official, personally visited Edward R. Fields, a leader of the National States' Rights Party, a white supremacist group, also to tell him to stay away from the event. But Wallace refused to talk directly to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy when he called to learn of Wallace's plans.