1962 - Oxford, Mississippi
John F. Kennedy had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency in 1960 by a razor-thin margin of less than 1 percent of the popular vote. The African-American electorate helped swing the balance of power to Kennedy's side in New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Texas, and South Carolina, all states that had supported Eisenhower in 1956. Overall, Kennedy brought back to the Democratic Party the 7 percent of black ballots that had defected to the Republicans four years earlier. The Massachusetts senator mainly owed this increased support from black voters to a highly publicized incident during the campaign. In late October, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been arrested in Atlanta after participating in a sit-in demonstration to integrate eating facilities in Rich's department store. After King was sent to the state prison in Reidsville, Kennedy telephoned Mrs. Coretta King to express his concern, and his aides clandestinely arranged for Dr. King's release. Vice President Nixon refused to intervene, which prompted King's father, a prominent minister and previously a Nixon supporter, to throw his endorsement to Kennedy. Ironically, during the 1950s Kennedy's record on black civil rights was unspectacular and virtually indistinguishable from Nixon's.
Whatever Kennedy's intentions may have been, they were altered by pressure from the civil rights movement. The Freedom Rides in 1961 forced the Kennedy Administration to dispatch Federal marshals to Montgomery, Alabama to protect the demonstrators. Still, the president and his brother Robert, whom he had appointed attorney general, preferred to keep Federal force out of the South and defuse potential crises through appealing to southern officials to obey the law of the land. Because they recognized that mass demonstrations to desegregate public accommodations and schools tended to provoke unruly confrontations between blacks and whites, the Kennedys sought a more orderly means of promoting civil rights without attracting unflattering headlines.
A year later, the president had to deploy Federal troops to Oxford, Mississippi to quell a riot that erupted after James Meredith became the first African American to gain admission to the the University of Mississippi, known as "Ole Miss". On September 10, 1962, the Supreme Court ordered the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, a twenty-eight year old Air Force Veteran, after a sixteen month legal battle. The University of Mississippi in Oxford refused to enroll James Meredith despite a court order to do so. Governor Ross Barnett disavowed the decree and had Meredith physically barred from enrolling. President Kennedy responded by federalizing the National Guard and sending Army troops to protect Meredith. Authorized by EO 11053 of 30 September 1962, a total 10,927 total Mississippi Guard were federalized (9,894 ARNG - 122 units; 1,033 ANG - 4 units) from 30 September 1962 - 23 October 1963. President Kennedy told the nation he "federalized the Mississippi National Guard as the most appropriate instrument, should any be needed, to preserve law and order while U.S. Marshals carried out the orders of the court ..." After days of violence and rioting by whites, Meredith, escorted by federal marshals, enrolled on October 1, 1962. Two men were killed in the turmoil and more than 300 injured.
In spite of Governor Ross Barnett's initial defiance of federal rulings, Meredith prevailed and graduated from the university in 1963. Because he had earned credits in the military and at Jackson State College, Meredith graduated the following August without incident.
In 1966 Meredith began a 220-mile "March Against Fear" from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. He hoped to demonstrate a positive change in the racial climate, but he was shot soon after he commenced the march. Civil rights leaders rallied to the cause and came to continue the march from the point at which Meredith fell.
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