Ole Miss desegregation

SIGNIFICANCE: The October 1, 1962, enrollment of the first Black student at the University of Mississippi provoked a national controversy.

In January, 1961, James Meredith, a native Mississippian and an Air Force veteran attending Jackson State College, one of Mississippi’s all-Black colleges, decided to transfer to the University of Mississippi, affectionately called “Ole Miss.” His application was rejected because, Ole Miss officials maintained, Jackson State was not an approved Southern Association Secondary School and because Meredith did not furnish letters of recommendation from University of Mississippi alumni. On May 31, 1961, he filed a lawsuit against the university, charging that he had been denied admission because of his race. In its 114-year history, the University of Mississippi had never admitted a Black student.

Meredith’s Legal Victory

A federal district court judge dismissed Meredith’s suit, but in June, 1962, a U.S. court of appeals ruled that Meredith had been rejected from Ole Miss “solely because he was a Negro,” a ruling based on the Brown v. Board of Educationschool desegregation case of 1954. The court ordered the university to admit Meredith, and the ruling was upheld by Justice Hugo L. Black of the United States Supreme Court. On September 13, Mississippi governor Ross Barnett delivered a televised speech and stated, “No school will be integrated in Mississippi while I’m governor.” A week later, the board of trustees of Ole Miss appointed Governor Barnett as the university’s registrar, and he personally blocked Meredith from registering for courses that same day.

Throughout Meredith’s court appeals, the U.S. Department of Justice had been monitoring the case. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of President John F. Kennedy, made more than a dozen phone calls to Governor Barnett, hoping to persuade him to allow Meredith to matriculate and thereby avoid a confrontation between the state of Mississippi and the federal government. The attorney general had provided Meredith with federal marshals to protect him as he attempted to register.

On September 24, the court of appeals that initially had heard Meredith’s case again ordered the Board of Higher Education of Mississippi to allow Meredith to register. The following day, Meredith reported to the registrar’s office in the university’s Lyceum Building, but again Governor Barnett was there to block his registration. During a phone conversation with Attorney General Kennedy that same day, Barnett declared that he would never agree to allow Meredith to attend the University of Mississippi. When Kennedy reminded Barnett that he was openly defying a court order and could be subject to penalty, Barnett told Kennedy that he would rather spend the rest of his life in prison than allow Meredith to enroll. On September 26, Meredith again tried to register for courses, and for the third time, Governor Barnett turned him away. Two days later, the court of appeals warned Barnett that if he continued to block Meredith’s admission to Ole Miss, the governor would be found in contempt of court, arrested, and fined ten thousand dollars per day. On Saturday, September 29, Governor Barnett appeared at an Ole Miss football game and proudly announced, “I love Mississippi, I love her people, her customs! And I love and respect her heritage. Ask us what we say, it’s to hell with Bobby K!”

That evening, President Kennedy called Governor Barnett and told him that the federal government would continue to back Meredith until Ole Miss admitted him. Under direct pressure from the president, Barnett began to reconsider. Finally, he agreed to allow Meredith to register on Sunday, September 30, when, the governor surmised, few students and news reporters would be milling around the campus. On Sunday evening, Meredith arrived at the Lyceum Building protected by three hundred marshals, armed in riot gear and equipped with tear gas.

As Meredith and his escorts approached the campus, a group of twenty-five hundred students and other agitators attempted to block their passage. The crowd began to shout and throw bricks and bottles at the federal marshals, who retaliated with tear gas. Some of the protesters were armed with guns and began firing random shots. One federal marshal was seriously wounded by a bullet in the throat. Two onlookers, Paul Guihard, a French journalist, and Roy Gunter, a jukebox repairman, were shot and killed by rioters.

Kennedy’s National Address

On Sunday evening, while Mississippians rioted on the Ole Miss campus, President Kennedy addressed the nation on television. The Meredith crisis had captured the country’s and news media’s attention, and the president attempted to show Mississippians and other U.S. citizens that his administration’s commitment to Civil Rights movement was serious and unwavering. He reminded his audience that “Americans are free . . . to disagree with the law but not to disobey it. For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law.” He told Mississippians, “The eyes of the nation and all the world are upon you and upon all of us. And the honor of your university—and state— are in the balance.”

The situation at the University of Mississippi was deteriorating. The federal marshals, low on tear gas, requested additional help to control the unruly mob. President Kennedy federalized Mississippi National Guardsmen and ordered them to Oxford. At dawn on Monday morning, the first of five thousand troops began arriving at Oxford to restore order. During the evening’s rioting, more than one hundred people were injured and about two hundred were arrested, only twenty-four of whom were Ole Miss students.

On Monday morning, October 1, at 8:30 A.M., Meredith again presented himself at the Lyceum Building to register. He was closely guarded by federal marshals, and National Guardsmen continued patrolling the Ole Miss campus and Oxford’s streets. Meredith, dressed impeccably in a business suit, registered for classes and began his matriculation at the University of Mississippi. “I am intent on seeing that every citizen has an opportunity of being a first-class citizen,” Meredith told a reporter the next day. “I am also intent on seeing that citizens have a right to be something if they work hard enough.”

During his tenure at Ole Miss, Meredith was often the target of insults and threats. Federal marshals remained with him during his entire time at the university. On August 18, 1963, Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi with a bachelor of arts degree in political science. After a year of study in Africa, Meredith enrolled at Columbia University of Law. In 1966, the year before he completed his law degree, Meredith was wounded by a sniper’s gunshot during a voter registration march from Tennessee to Mississippi.

Meredith’s Impact

As a result of his successful effort to desegregate Ole Miss, Meredith became one of the heroes of the Civil Rights movement. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963), Martin Luther King, Jr., states that “One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer.”

Meredith’s victory at the University of Mississippi was a key triumph for the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s. Within two years, the University of Alabama, the University of Georgia, and other Southern colleges and universities that had prevented Black students from enrolling were also desegregated public schools, as the era of overt segregation in U.S. institutions of higher learning came to an end.

The Meredith case also convincingly demonstrated that the federal government would use its power to end racial segregation in the South. Despite Governor Barnett’s defiance, President Kennedy and his attorney general were able to force the state of Mississippi to comply with a federal court order, signaling that the South would be unable to block the subsequent wave of federal legislation designed to void the region’s segregation laws.

Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1963. He would continue a lifetime of civil rights advocacy. In 1966 Meredith organized a "March Against Fear," a trek from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. The intent of the march was to spur voter registration among Blacks. Along the route, he was shot and wounded by Aubrey James Norvell, a White man. Meredith quickly recovered from his wounds and continued in the procession until its completion in Jackson. The march reportedly led to the registration of more than 3,000 people.  

Meredith later made several unsuccessful attempts to win public office. He did later work on the staffs of several politicians, including North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Meredith also focused his efforts on promoting literacy and voting rights. Although Meredith had continuously disavowed his standing as a hero of the Civil Rights movement, in 2006, a statue of Meredith was placed on the campus of the University of Mississippi in his honor. Six years later, Ole Miss commemorated the 50th anniversary of his admission into the university. 

Bibliography

Barrett, Russell. Integration at Ole Miss. Quadrangle, 1965.

"James Meredith & the Civil Rights Struggle in Mississippi." National Museum of African American History and Culture, 2024, nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/james-meredith-and-civil-rights-struggle-mississippi. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

Meredith, James H. Three Years in Mississippi. Indiana University Press, 1966.

"Meredith, James Howard." Stanford University, kinginstitute.stanford.edu/meredith-james-howard. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Robert Kennedy and His Times. Houghton, 1978.

Wexler, Sanford. The Civil Rights Movement: An Eyewitness History. Facts on File, 1993.