Ole Miss honors ’60s trailblazer
University celebrates James Meredith, once a target of hatred as its first Black student.
JACKSON, Miss. — The University of Mississippi is paying tribute to 89-year-old James Meredith 60 years after white protesters erupted into violence as he became the first Black student to enroll in what was then a bastion of Deep South segregation.
As it has done on other anniversaries of integration, the university is hosting celebrations and academic events.
On Saturday, Meredith was honored during the Ole Miss-Kentucky football game, two days after he attended the Rebels’ practice to speak to players.
“He came and revolutionized our thinking. He came to open our closed society,” Donald Cole, who retired in 2018 as the university’s assistant provost and head of multicultural affairs, said at a celebration Wednesday night.
Meredith, who lives in Jackson, has resisted the label of civil rights leader, which he believes implies that civil rights are separate from other human rights. He says his effort to enter Ole Miss was his own battle to conquer white supremacy.
Meredith’s being honored at the Ole Miss-Kentucky game was an ironic echo of history.
Two days before Meredith enrolled on the Oxford campus in 1962, race-baiting Gov. Ross Barnett worked a white crowd into a frenzy at a football stadium in Jackson. Ole Miss fans waved Confederate flags to support their Rebels over the Kentucky Wildcats — and to defy any move toward integration.
“I love Mississippi,” Barnett declared. “I love her people! Our customs! I love and I respect our heritage!”
The next evening, Barnett quietly reached an
agreement with U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy to let Meredith enter Mississippi’s oldest public university. Meredith already had a federal court order.
White mobs of students and outsiders erupted when he arrived on the leafy campus with the protection of over 500 federal law enforcement officers. President John F. Kennedy deployed National Guard troops to quell the violence, and Meredith enrolled on Oct. 1.
At Wednesday’s event at the university, Meredith told an audience: “In my opinion, this is the best day I ever lived. But there’s some more truth. Celebration is good. I don’t think there’s anybody in this house or in the state of Mississippi that think the problem has been solved.”
Meredith has said for the past several years that he’s on a mission from God, and said Wednesday that he sees a special role for Black women to lead the way in restoring moral order to American society.
“There’s nothing in Mississippi that God, Jesus Christ and the Black woman cannot fix,” he said.
Meredith grew up in segregated Mississippi before finishing high school in Florida. He served in the Air Force and attended Jackson
State College, a historically Black school in Mississippi’s capital, before suing to gain admission to Ole Miss.
A local resident and a French journalist were killed in the violence as Meredith enrolled. More than 200 officers and soldiers were wounded and 200 people were arrested.
Federal marshals provided Meredith with roundthe-clock protection until he graduated with a political science degree in 1963. Meredith said Wednesday that most of his knowledge about what was happening on campus came from the marshals.
“Most of them were
scared to death of the Mississippi people with rifles and shotguns,” he said.
U.S. Marshals Service Director Ronald L. Davis named Meredith an honorary deputy marshal during the ceremony Wednesday. Davis, who is Black, said Meredith brought widespread change to American society.
“You chose a path that was not traveled — one with much resistance, one with fear and threats and violence, and you went there anyway,” Davis said.
The University of Mississippi had about 21,850 students on all of its campuses in fall of 2021, about 12.7% of them Black. About 38% of Mississippi residents are Black.
Ethel Scurlock, the first Black dean of the university’s honors college, pointed out in Wednesday’s keynote speech that she had not yet been born when Meredith integrated Ole Miss in 1962, or when he was shot after setting out on his March Against Fear in 1966.
“But Mr. Meredith, I am here today,” Scurlock said. “I am the unborn baby that you were willing to go to war for.”
‘This is the best day I ever lived. But ... I don’t think there’s anybody ... in the state of Mississippi that think the problem has been solved.’ — James Meredith, at a celebration in his honor