Born on June 25, 1933 in Kosciusko, Mississippi in James Meredith descended from a cultural diverse family having British Canadian, Choctaw, Scots and African-American heritage. Mississippi at that time was under Jim Crows tyrant rule and therefore all the schools in his territory were segregated as “white” and “colored”. As a child, James Meredith and all of his siblings worked in the fields when not at school. In 1936, at the age of three, James began attending Marble Rock School, which his father helped build, and in 1941 the boy continued his education at the Attala County Training School, a four-mile walk each way every day. In 1950 he left Mississippi to live with his uncle in St. Petersburg, Florida, and attend segregated Gibbs High School for his senior year.
In 1951 Meredith graduated from high school and soon after he joined United States Air Force and rose to the rank of staff sergeant. For nine years he moved around the United States and Japan on assignment, rising to the rank of staff sergeant and earning five good conduct medals. In December 1956 he married Mary June Wiggins, and their son John Howard was born four years later. Meredith returned to Kosciusko in August 1960, fully intending to wage the war on white supremacy he had planned throughout his Air Force career. Upon his return, he went on to attend Jackson State University for two years and earned good grades. In 1961, Meredith applied to the University of Mississippi, which only accepted White students. He was inspired by U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Meredith wanted to use his constitutional rights to attend the state university. His mission was to break the system of White supremacy, to make the federal government enforce his rights, a move which involved a long and bitter court battle against Mississippi. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, as they are supported by all the taxpayers. Despite being fully qualified James Meredith was denied based on what he felt was racial discrimination. He was rejected twice, just as Medgar Evers had been, but he didn’t give up. In his application, Meredith wrote he needed admission for his country, race, family, and himself and that he intend to pursue the degree all the way. Leader of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP) branch of Mississippi, Medgar Evers assisted James Meredith on the matter.
Meredith contacted the organization’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which appointed attorney Constance Baker Motley to his case. She and Mississippi lawyer R. Jess Brown filed a lawsuit against the university. The lawsuit claimed the cause of rejection was not the unsatisfactory grades because he had a highly successful academic record, but the reason was solely based on his color. The case went through many hearings, after which the U.S Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Meredith had the right to be admitted to the state school. The United States Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the appeals court. On September 13, 1962, the District Court entered an injunction directing the members of the Board of Trustees and the University officials to register Meredith.
However, Meredith’s struggle for justice was not over yet. Democratic Governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett felt being cheated of his right to discriminate and mistreat the Blacks. He declared "no school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your governor". Thus he had the Legislature pass a law that “prohibited any person who was convicted of a state crime from admission to a state school.” The law specifically targeted Meredith to have his registration revoked because he had been once convicted of false voter registration. It did not end here, later two state courts decreed barring Meredith’s registration. 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. That day Meredith was rebuffed again by Governor Barnett in his efforts to gain admission, though university officials were prepared to admit him.
On September 28th 1962, 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. Lieutenant Governor Johnson was found in the same position and was given the same treatment. Ross Barnett received several calls from the U.S Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy upon the subject of James Meredith’s admission. Accompanied by federal marshals, Meredith made multiple attempts to enroll at the university but was blocked by Gov. Ross Barnett. In the fall of 1962, as mob violence seemed imminent, Robert F. Kennedy called in federal marshals for protection so that Meredith could register for classes. He returned the next day and began classes.
On September 29, Governor Barnett made a spirited speech at halftime of the Ole Miss-Kentucky football game, firing up the crowd and encouraging people to block Meredith’s entry to the university. On Sunday, September 30, 1962, Governor Barnett called the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, to try to get him to postpone Meredith’s admission to the University. The Attorney General refused. On the eve of Meredith’s fateful day, President John F. Kennedy sent in the National Guard and federal troops to guarantee that Meredith attended his first day of classes. Meredith, accompanied by Mississippi Highway Patrol and 500 federal marshals, moved into his dorm room On October 1st 1962, Meredith became the first African-American to have been enrolled in an all-White university.
The riots broke out in the vicinity protesting against his enrollment and as a result a French journalist got caught up and was killed. Inside the campus, things were still difficult for him as he was mostly bullied and harassed by White students. Roving bands of angry townspeople and students set fires and littered the campus. After a night of disruptions, two people died and hundreds, mostly federal agents assigned to prevent rioting, were injured. The crowd, which numbered 3000, threw bottles and rocks, and the marshals tear-gassed them. More than 300 people were injured, and two people were killed.
He returned the next day and began classes. In a March 1963 letter published in the New York Amsterdam News, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr asked for the public’s support of Meredith, describing him as “a symbol of self-respect and dignity.” King asked the public to pray for Meredith and to express to him “how much you appreciate his heroism”. On 18 August 1963 Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi with a major in political science and minors in French and history. That same day he and his family left Mississippi at the request of the federal government. They spent the next year in Washington, D.C., and traveling around Europe, where Meredith gave public speeches. In 1964 he accepted an invitation to study at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He returned to the United States in 1965. He then attended law school through a scholarship at Columbia University and earned an LL.B (law degree) in 1968.
James Meredith continued as a front runner in the civil rights battle. In June 1966 he began a solitary protest march, which he called the "March Against Fear", from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. This was a protest against voter registration intimidation and other violent acts against African Americans. The march was scheduled to start in Memphis Tennessee and end in Jackson Mississippi. Shortly into his march, Meredith was shot by a sniper and was hospitalized. He suffered from superficial wounds to his neck, legs, head, and right side. Instead of stopping the march the crime mobilized many civil rights activists including Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick, who were determined to continued the march in Meredith’s name until he recovered. He was able to rejoin them on June 25th, 1966 after his hospital treatment. On the following day they reached their target of Jackson Mississippi.
Despite Ross Barnett’s attempts to thwart Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi, he endorsed the former governor in 1967 when he unsuccessfully sought to regain the governorship. After receiving his law degree from Columbia University in 1968, he became a businessman in New York City and no longer maintained his involvement in the civil rights movement. Over the next several years Meredith became more politically involved making several unsuccessful bids for public office. In 1972, he ran for a seat in the Senate, losing to Democratic incumbent James Eastland. From 1989 to 1991, Meredith served as a policy advisor to conservative Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who only ten years earlier had opposed the establishment of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Meredith published an autobiographical account entitled "Three Years in Mississippi". In the book, he gave a detailed account of his life and what had inspired him to fight tirelessly for his civil rights. Later when asked about his encounters at Ole Miss in an interview for CNN, Meredith stated, "I was engaged in a war. I considered myself engaged in a war from Day One. And my objective was to force the federal government – the Kennedy administration at that time – into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen". A local community leader in, Meredith organized the Black Man’s March to the Library in Memphis to promote reading and writing, and the Black Man’s March for Education to the University of Mississippi.
Meredith was a supporter of the 1991 gubernatorial campaign of Louisiana State Representative and ex-Klansman David Duke. On this endorsement, and of Ross Barnett for governor years earlier, Meredith wrote “I prefer bigotry to be out in the open where I can confront it". He has maintained that he worked for equality for all Americans rather than for the civil rights movement, saying “Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.” Despite declaring that he did not want to be remembered for his role in integrating the university, he participated in commemorations of the fortieth anniversary of his admission. And exactly four years later, the university unveiled a commemorative statue depicting Meredith walking through the door of higher education. In 1956, Meredith married Mary June Wiggins while serving in the U.S. military. They would have three sons before Mary died in 1979. The following year, Meredith married Judy Alsobrooks, with whom he has one son and a daughter. Meredith rejects has rejected the notion that he is a civil rights hero, instead arguing that he was fighting for his God-given rights as an American citizen.