Thanks for the thread, mth44sc.

Long one of my favorites and one I feared I had lost for all time...

And I'll follow your example and pass it along.

Thanks for sharing, mthsc. That is outstanding. K&R

James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights movement figure, a writer, and a political adviser. In 1962, he was the first African-American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi,[1] an event that was a flashpoint in the American civil rights movement.

Motivated by President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, Meredith decided to exercise his constitutional rights and apply to the University of Mississippi.[2] His goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration to enforce civil rights for African Americans...

Meredith won in court, but the Governor still fought it, and RFK talked him into following the law and admitting him. Federal law, not state law.

Some white students and segregationists, many who had driven in for the event, protested his enrollment by rioting on the Oxford campus.

Robert Kennedy called in 500 U.S. Marshals to take control, who were supported by the 70th Army Engineer Combat Battalion from Ft Campbell, Kentucky. They created a tent camp and kitchen for the US Marshals.

To bolster law enforcement, President John F. Kennedy sent in U.S. Army troops from the 2nd Infantry Division from Ft. Benning, GA under the command of Maj. Gen Charles Billingslea and military police from the 503rd Military Police Battalion, and called in troops from the Mississippi Army National Guard.[13]

Gen. Bllingslea's staff car was mobbed and set on fire at the entrance to the university gate. General Billingslea, the Deputy Commanding General, John Corley, and aide, Capt Harold Lyon, were trapped inside the burning car but managed to force the car door open and had to crawl 200 yards into the gate to the University Lyceum Building while someone was shooting at them and continued to shoot the windows out, though the Army never returned fire.

Gen Billingslea had established a series of escalating secret code words for issuing ammunition down to the platoons with another one for issuing it to squads, and a third one for loading, none of which could take place without the General himself, confirming the secret codes.

In the violent clash, two people died, including the French journalist Paul Guihard,[7] on assignment for the London Daily Sketch. He was found dead behind the Lyceum building with a gunshot wound to the back.

One hundred-sixty US Marshals, one-third of the group, were injured in the melee, and 40 soldiers and National Guardsmen were wounded.[7][1[13]


US Army trucks loaded with steel-helmeted US Marshals roll across the University of Mississippi campus on October 3, 1962.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Meredith

During this time, he was advised by Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader.

Evers was also inspired by Kennedy and killed the same day he came home to tell his family the good news he had heard about his decision. Terrorists gunned him down in his front yard in view of his wife and children.

In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go," Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917 rifle; the bullet ripped through his heart. He staggered 9 meters (30 feet) before collapsing.

He was taken to the local hospital in Jackson where he was initially refused entry because of his color, until it was explained who he was; he died in the hospital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgar_Evers#Assassination

All these leaders were attacked repeatedly and denied the most basic of human rights. Meredith was a very intelligent, successful man with his own strong views shown at the link. The terrorists have not stopped hating:

In 2014, vandals linked to the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity vandalized Meredith's honorary University of Mississippi campus statue by putting a noose around its neck and draping it with a controversial former Georgia state flag. In response, he said "that just clearly shows that we’re not training our children like the Bible says. They don’t know right and wrong, good and bad and how to apply it to life."[1]

Our current crop of Tenthers, Teaterrorists and Libertarians would have called what the Kennedys and the military did the action of a police state.