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Author is only one of many hats worn by the enigmatic James Meredith. Born June 25, 1933, in Kosciusko, Mississippi, Meredith is best known as the first African American student of the University of Mississippi. Meredith served in the Air Force from 1951 to 1960, including a tour of duty in Japan. He then attended Jackson State Collegefor two years. In the fall of 1962 Meredith risked his life when he successfully applied the laws of integration and became the first black student at the University of Mississippi, a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement which sparked riots on the Oxford campus that left two people dead.
In 1966 he recounted the experience in his first publication, Three Years in Mississippi. Of that book, a reviewer for Newsweek wrote, Seldom is a piece of violent history so dispassionately dissected by one of its participants as it has been by James Meredith in this three-years-later study of his breakthrough at the University of Mississippi. Part report and part legal brief, part manifesto, part tract, it is a valuable and fascinating account.
Shortly after the publication of Three Years in Mississippi, Meredith conceived and organized the Walk Against Fear, a march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, in a bold and selfless repudiation of the physical violence faced by African Americans for exercising their voting rights. Meredith was shot on the march, and when he was physically able to resume the march, he did so, joined this time by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other prominent civil rights leaders of the day.
In 1968 Meredith received a LL.B. from Columbia University. Merediths career has included a run for a congressional seat in 1972 and, in perhaps his most controversial move yet, a stint on the staff of arch-conservative Senator Jesse Helms beginning in 1989. Merediths most recent publication is a historical work: Mississippi: A Volume of Eleven Books was published in 1995.
On March 21, 1997, James Meredith presented his papersto the University of Mississippi where they are maintained by the Special Collections branch of the J.D. Williams Library.
1962 University of Mississippi Riot
President Kennedy ordered Federal Marshals to escort James Meredith, the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, to campus. A riot broke out and before the National Guard could arrive to reinforce the marshals, two students were killed.
In January 1961, James Meredith, an African American, applied for admission to the University of Mississippi. Officials at the school returned his application. Mr. Meredith took his case to court. On September 10, 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he had the right to attend the University of Mississippi. The Governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, personally blocked Mr. Meredith from registering at the University even after the Supreme Court ruled. Finally, on September 30, 1962, a Sunday, Mr. Meredith was escorted onto the campus by federal marshals and Civil Rights Division lawyers. Stationed on or near the campus to protect him were 123 deputy federal marshals, 316 US Border Patrolmen, and 97 federal prison guards. Within an hour, the federal forces were attacked by a mob that would grow to number 2,000 and who fought them with guns, bricks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails. The marshals had been ordered not to shoot and so used tear gas to try to stop the rioting. The violence continued until President Kennedy sent 16,000 federal troops to the campus. When it was over, 2 people were dead, 28 marshals had been shot, 160 people were injured, and James Meredith became the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi.
(Agony on Hwy 51)
June 6, 1966
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