In 1966, James Meredith, the first black man to be integrated into The University of Mississippi, organized a one man march to encourage Black Americans to vote. Shortly into his march, he was shot in the neck, head, and back.
James H. Meredith, in 1962, became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi.
A former serviceman in the U.S. Air Force, Meredith applied and was accepted to the University of Mississippi in 1962, but his admission was revoked when the registrar learned of his race.
A federal court ordered "Ole Miss" to admit him, but when he tried to register on September 20, 1962, he found the entrance to the office blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett.
On September 28, the governor was found guilty of civil contempt and was ordered to cease his interference with desegregation at the university or face arrest and a fine of $10,000 a day. Two days later, Meredith was escorted onto the Ole Miss campus by U.S. Marshals — setting off riots that resulted in the deaths of two students. He returned the next day and began classes.
In 1963, Meredith, who was a transfer student from all-black Jackson State College, graduated with a degree in political science.
Three years later, Meredith returned to the public eye when he began his March Against Fear. On June 6, just one day into the march, he was sent to a hospital by a sniper's bullet. Other civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, arrived to continue the march on his behalf.
It was during the March Against Fear that Carmichael, who was leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, first spoke publicly of "Black Power" — his concept of militant African American nationalism.
James Meredith later recovered and rejoined the march he had originated, and on June 26 the marchers successfully reached Jackson, Mississippi.
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Claudette Colvin, whose 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus helped spark the modern civil rights movement, has died. She was 86.
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