8 BATTLE OF OLE MISS
Meredith, James
(1933– ): First black to
enroll at the University of
Mississippi; shot during
his March Against Fear.I
n January 1961, Air Force veteran James Meredithsought to transfer
from Jackson State College to the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
As a Mississippi resident with many college credits, the 28-year-old
Meredith was entitled to attend the state’s premier university and citadel of
white supremacy, but he faced very long odds. Five black men had tried
unsuccessfully to integrate higher education in the Magnolia State before
Meredith. One was admitted to a mental institution instead, while another
was sentenced to seven years on a chain gang on a trumped-up charge of
stealing chicken feed. Indeed, not a single black student had gone to any
white school in Mississippi since Brownprohibited segregated education.
Despite this record of futility, Meredith believed that his ‘divine responsibil-
ity’ was to crack the color line at Ole Missby forcing a national crisis. Just
days before Meredith made his plans, he learned that Charlayne Hunter and
Hamilton Holmes had peacefully ended 175 years of segregation at the
University of Georgia.
When Meredith inquired about applying to Ole Miss, he concealed his
race. The unaware registrar sent Meredith a letter that said, ‘We are very
pleased to know of your interest in becoming a member of our student body.’
Meredith then revealed that he was an ‘American-Mississippi-Negro citizen.’
This bombshell stunned university and state officials, who schemed for
twenty months to keep Meredith out of Ole Miss. Hotly denying that race
was a factor, school officials refused Meredith’s application because it was
‘late,’ because Jackson State and Ole Miss operated on different academic cal-
endars, because Jackson State was not accredited by the major accrediting
association, and because Meredith did not present letters of recommendation
from five Ole Miss alumni. As the duplicitous delays became transparent,
Meredith asked the NAACP for help. Although Thurgood Marshall remarked
that ‘this man has got to be crazy’ to challenge Mississippi officials, he
assigned the case to Constance Baker Motley when black woman lawyers
were rarely seen in a southern courtroom.Battle of Ole Miss: James
Meredith’s integration of
the University of Missis-
sippi in 1962.