James Meredith and the University of Mississippi’s Integration When a person presently looks at university school systems, one never imagines the struggle to obtain such diverse campuses. With Caucasians, Asians, Latinos, and African Americans all willing and able to attend any institution, it is difficult now to envision a world where, because of one’s skin color, a person is denied university acceptance. In actuality, this world existed only fifty years ago. In a time of extreme racial discrimination, African Americans fought and struggled toward one of many goals: to integrate schools. As a pioneer in the South, a man named James Meredith took a courageous step by applying to the University of Mississippi, an all white university. After overcoming many legal and social obstacles, the University of Mississippi’s integration sent positive effects rippling among universities across the nation. As a native Mississippian, James Meredith honestly lived and worked all of his life. After serving nine years in the United States Air Force, Meredith wholeheartedly absorbed John F. Kennedy’s ideals on “civil rights” and decided to apply to the University of Mississippi (Howard 1060). Upon applying, Meredith knew that if accepted, he would be the first African American student to attend the University of Mississippi. Deep in the heart of the South, the state of Mississippi prided itself on its all white campuses and resistence toward integration. Little did they know that James Meredith, an uprising civil rights activist, would pull a racial chord in the university that would change it for lifetimes to come. From past observations, acceptance into “Ole Miss” appeared impossible for an African American. With “[f]our known... ... middle of paper ... ...Sept. 1962: 1. Buckley, Thomas. “Tear Gas and Sticks Repel Wild Student Charges.” New York Times 1 Oct. 1962: 23. Cohodas, Nadine. “James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 16 (Summer, 1997): 112-22. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1077-3711%28199722%290%3A16%3C112%3AJMATIO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W Howard, William L.. “Meredith, James Howard.” The African American Encyclopedia. 1993. “Meredith’s Fight for Admission to University Spans 16 Months.” New York Times 1 Oct. 1962: 25. “Mississippi Rejoins the Union.” New York Times 1 Oct 1962: 30. Sitton, Claude. “Negro At Mississippi U. As Barnett Yields; 3 Dead In Campus Riot, 6 Marshals Shot; Guardsmen Move In; Kennedy Makes Plea.” New York Times 1 Oct. 1962: 1. Smith, Hendrick. “Johnson Is Fined.” New York Times 30 Sept. 1962: 1.
...isely. This book has been extremely influential in the world of academia and the thinking on the subject of segregation and race relations in both the North and the South, but more importantly, it has influenced race relations in practice since it was first published. However, Woodward’s work is not all perfect. Although he does present his case thoroughly, he fails to mention the Negroes specifically as often as he might have. He more often relies on actions taken by whites as his main body of evidence, often totally leaving out the actions that may have been taken by the black community as a reaction to the whites’ segregationist policies.
Neil McMillen’s book, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow categorically examines the plight of African Americans living in Mississippi during the era of Jim Crow. McMillen, a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, describes the obstacles that African Americans dealt with in the fields of education, labor, mob violence, and politics. Supplementing each group with data tables, charts and excerpts from Southern newspapers of the day, McMillen saturates the reader with facts that help to understand the problems faced by black Mississippians in the years after Reconstruction.
Kellogg, Charles Flint. NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967.
Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.
Integration and the University of Mississippi. Cartoon. New York Times [New York] 30 Sept. 1962: 1.
The University of Mississippi is an institution of higher learning just as any of the 629 public 4- year universities in the United States. Due to the location of the university, the school faces criticism and publicity for its unconscious efforts and decisions to uphold its southern heritage. Though there were attempts to modernize the school, “Ole Miss” still holds the image of the Old South. The decisions and actions of supporters of the school’s traditions are weighing heavily on the universities inability to progress. There is a difference in the meanings of certain symbols based on a person’s understanding, genetic make-up, cultural background and race. Though the university is upholding its traditional ways of learning and functioning, change is somewhat required by society. “. The University of Mississippi does uphold a traditional way of life within the name, “Ole Miss”, and other symbols of racial segregation, confederacy and white superiority. The University of Mississippi will be seen as inferior to other universities because of its faithfulness to “Ole Miss” and upholding southern traditions. The traditions of the University should be dealt away with or altered, if not, the traditions of the University will continuously hold an “open wound”. In order to uphold the South’s “southern identity”, the use of symbol as traditions at the University of Mississippi preserve a way of life that is interchangeable with white identity.
“Nationally, more than one-quarter of the students in the 1930s were black. Yet they received only about one-tenth of the total education revenues. Many Americans believed that African Americans were simply not capable of excelling in school” (“The 1930’s education…”). For colored women, it was more difficult to prove their abilities than any other race. For example, Asian women were not affected as much simply because their skin color was closer to that of a white’s than a black person. As black women were treated unequally in the education department, white women have also struggled in getting a higher education. “They gave young women a chance to gain the same kinds of education as their brothers without having to spend much of their time and energy fighting the prejudice they would have faced at male-dominated institutions. At the same time, they provided a proving-ground in which college administrators, professors, and students could demonstrate that women could flourish intellectually while remaining healthy and ladylike.” (“The Value
The early 1960s, a time that was on the brink of revolutionizing the United States, as Americans thought they knew it. This was a time of great inequality and segregation amongst White-Americans and African-Americans. The fight for equality and rights for Americans was at the height. One university, the University Mississippi also known as Ole Miss, strong rooted in the traditional heritage of the “Old South” the University was very strict they have never admitted an African American student until 1962, James Meredith. James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi served as a catalyst not only for himself in life, but for the African American community and furthering prosperity
For my Black Georgian assignment, I will be discussing the life and activism of one African American minister, educator, leading black voice, and former Morehouse College President, Benjamin Elijah Mays. Mays was an African American born into a new generation of freedom. However, throughout his life, he would experience the hardships and hindrances known to affect the black community in the 1890’s – 1900’s. Mays served his community as a leading advocate for racial equality, ending segregation, and the strengthening of young black men (and women) in their quest for equality. This paper aims to describe the life, works, views, actions, and influence that Benjamin Mays exhibited.
Merrimon Cuninggim was the dean of Perkins School of Theology who successfully integrated Perkins by admitting five black students. In Merrimon Cuninggim’s book, “Perkins Led the Way: the story of desegregation at Southern Methodist University,” he describes the collaborative method that was used to settle issues that the presence of black students will raise. Rather than giving them a list of rules of what they could and could not do like the students expected, as he states in his speech at an Alumni convention, the students and the dean would discuss concerns, and he would provide advice that the students may or may not
Chafe, William, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad. Remembering Jim Crow. New York: The New Press, 2001.
Green, Makiah. “I’m a Scholar, Not a Criminal: The Plight of Black Students at USC.”
James Meredith, an African American student, was accepted into the University of Mississippi in the early year of 1962. After the realization of Meredith being African American, his acceptance was rejected immediately. During the year of 1962, Mississippi was still moving away from the segregation era. In order for Meredith to be accepted into the University of Mississippi, the Supreme Court would have to make a direct order to do so. James Meredith, was not welcomed by the state of Mississippi nor the students of the University. James Meredith, despite the hatred he received, attended the University of Mississippi.
Yet, these policies were controversial among the university’s population. For example, UNC was dealing with issues regarding desegregation and integration of larger percentages of minority students into UNC. Chapel Hill was lagging behind in its goal to raise the percentage of minority students to 10.6% over the next few years as mandated by the State Government (Parker, 1984a, 1). There were plans throughout the university to make campus more integrated for black and white students. One of these decisions was to have a certain percentage of black and white students in all dorms. At that time, most blacks lived in dorms on South Campus, but there were plans to remedy this by forcing white students to live in black dorms and black students to live in white dorms. Yet, not all students were fond of this idea. The Campus Y’s People Against Racism had a meeting where the chairperson stated that it would be unfair to minorities. Sibby Anderson said, “I only see dorm integration as a way that forces minorities to make a compromise” (Parker, 1984b, 1). On the other hand, the university reactions committee was in the progress of another, yet similar, idea. It was proposed that students could volunteer to live with students of other cultures, not race (Pipkin, 1984, p. 1). The concept of students living with people from other countries was going to expand the campus diversity and thought throughout the students. “If you know there are more cultures on this campus than black and white, and there are, and you set it up racially, it’s got to be for political purposes.” Sherrod Banks, the president of the Black Student Movement stated, agreeing that integration should be cultural rather than racial. Segregation was seen as two cultures interacting with each other, rather than two separate races. (Lucas, 1984,