KOSCIUSKO, Madam. — A new historical monument has been unveiled in the birthplace of James Meredithhonoring the black man who fought against white supremacy by integrating the University of Mississippi in 1962.
Meredith, 91wore a red Ole Miss baseball hat as he watched Friday’s ceremony from the front seat of a pickup truck from Kosciusko, a town of 6,800 that is also the birthplace of media mogul Oprah Winfrey. About 85 people attended, and many took selfies with Meredith and his wife, Judy Alsobrooks Meredith.
“The most important day of my life,” Meredith said in a short interview.
“More than half of the people here are my relatives,” he said. “And for family members to be left out in the cold like that – that’s something special.”
Meredith, who opposes the name civil rights leadernow lives in Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. He was born in Kosciusko and grew up on a nearby farm. He graduated from high school in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1951 and served in the Air Force for nine years before returning to Mississippi.
He attended Jackson State College — the historically black school that is now Jackson State University — for two years before filing a lawsuit to become the first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi.
A white mob erupted in violence when Meredith enrolled at Ole Missand U.S. marshals protected him on and off the Oxford campus. The university has honored him several times in recent decades. About today 10% of the students at the university are black.
“He is a man whose courage profoundly changed the course of history,” Kosciusko Mayor Tim Kyle said Friday.
While Meredith was enrolled at Ole Miss, his parents and some of his siblings lived in a small brick house in Kosciusko. The new historical marker is a short walk from that house, approximately where the marshals parked when Meredith visited family in 1962 and 1963.
Florida State University professor Davis Houck and his students worked with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History on the new marker, which also notes that Meredith was shot in a 1966 shooting. “March against fear” – a planned walk from Memphis, Tennessee; to Jackson, Mississippi; to encourage black voter registration.
Meredith’s eldest son, John Meredith, is currently president of the city council in Huntsville, Alabama. He said he could not attend the unveiling of other historical memorials honoring his father at Ole Miss, at the site of the 1966 shooting in Hernando, Mississippi, and outside the Capitol.
John Meredith said he has fond memories of visiting his grandmother, known as Mrs. Roxie, at the brick house in Kosciusko.
“So all of this is quite a homecoming for me personally, and my father is obviously thrilled to be honored in this way in his hometown,” said John Meredith. “It’s a great day for the Meredith family.”