Battle of Ole Miss 77funding to the Citizens’ Council and dismantling barriers to black voting.
Businessmen in Jackson defied general sentiment to comply with a new civil
rights act mandating integrated public facilities.
The Battle of Ole Miss demonstrated again that the federal government
had the power to enforce the law, if the president had the will. For two years,
Kennedy was a captive of political expediency and his distorted view of
American history. Finally, Kennedy sent troops into battle to protect the
rights of one black man, the first time since Lincoln had done so. Never-
theless, Martin Luther King would have to push the Kennedy administration
further by making a frontal attack on segregation as a moral crime, beginning
in Birmingham.