James Howard Meredith, a Mississippi native, U.S. Air Force veteran, and Jackson State College student. Meredith was also a very private person and an intense proponent of racial equality. He was a man with a mission.
Meredith seemed destined to challenge the racial status quo from as far back as his childhood in poverty-racked Attala County. His father, Cap, was the son of a former slave who had worked tirelessly to acquire his own land and register to vote. Cap built a fence around his family farm to keep trouble out and taught his son J. H. never to abide by the custom of entering a white person’s house only through the back door.
In the air force, J. H. was stationed in Japan, where he was deeply moved by the Japanese people’s acceptance of blacks. Meredith went home with a strong desire to help his own country become more tolerant. Encouraged by the election of President Kennedy and the integration of several segregated southern colleges and universities, he began to envision himself breaking the color barrier in Mississippi.
An outstanding student at all-black Jackson State, Meredith applied to transfer to the prestigious University of Mississippi—one of the state’s most prominent symbols of white privilege and power. Located in the quaint town of Oxford and steeped in the traditions of the Old South, Ole Miss was the school of choice for the children of Mississippi’s white elite. On February 4, 1961, Meredith received a telegram from the Ole Miss admissions officer denying his application. Three days later the Ole Miss Board of Trustees voted to revise the admission rules to give the school even more leeway to deny him—or any applicant—from entering. The NAACP filed a lawsuit on Meredith’s behalf, claiming that he had been denied admission because of his race. The state courts backed the trustees with the dubious ruling that there was no official policy of segregation at Ole Miss, even if no black student had ever been enrolled there.
As the case moved through the courts, the Sovereignty Commission sent investigators Andy Hopkins and Virgil Downing to Attala County to investigate Meredith’s relationship with his parents. After arriving in the hardscrabble farming community, the agents stopped at the county courthouse to pore through public records and interviewed county officials and local police to learn more about the Merediths. The investigation turned up nothing that would sink James’s application. The records showed he had purchased 84 acres from his father in 1960 and had secured license plates for a 1959 Volkswagen and a 1952 Cadillac. Sheriff W. T. Wasson told the agents that he had “known Cap Meredith for 20 years and that he knew him to be a good colored person.” The black superintendent of the Coahoma County Separate School District, J. T. Coleman, told investigators that James Meredith’s mother, Roxie, worked for $14 a week as a cook in the Tipton Street School. Unsolicited, Coleman threatened to fire Roxie if she ever publicly supported her son’s aspiration to attend Ole Miss. “Mr. Coleman also stated that should the schools in Mississippi ever be integrated, the schools would be ruined,” Downing reported, “and that he would do everything he possibly could to keep the schools segregated.”
The agents concluded that Cap and Roxie Meredith were determined to maintain a low profile. They hoped their neighbors would not link them to the man behind the Ole Miss controversy, which had become front-page news even in rural backwaters like Attala County. The agents also knew how to let the entire county know that the “integration agitator” at Ole Miss had roots in their community. Cap and Roxie’s low profile was shattered when the investigative report was leaked to the Jackson Clarion Ledger . On June 16, 1961, the paper ran a local story headlined “Meredith Drives Cadillac and Compact to Visit Pop.” But the spies’ small-town maneuverings would soon be eclipsed by
Meredith seemed destined to challenge the racial status quo from as far back as his childhood in poverty-racked Attala County. His father, Cap, was the son of a former slave who had worked tirelessly to acquire his own land and register to vote. Cap built a fence around his family farm to keep trouble out and taught his son J. H. never to abide by the custom of entering a white person’s house only through the back door.
In the air force, J. H. was stationed in Japan, where he was deeply moved by the Japanese people’s acceptance of blacks. Meredith went home with a strong desire to help his own country become more tolerant. Encouraged by the election of President Kennedy and the integration of several segregated southern colleges and universities, he began to envision himself breaking the color barrier in Mississippi.
An outstanding student at all-black Jackson State, Meredith applied to transfer to the prestigious University of Mississippi—one of the state’s most prominent symbols of white privilege and power. Located in the quaint town of Oxford and steeped in the traditions of the Old South, Ole Miss was the school of choice for the children of Mississippi’s white elite. On February 4, 1961, Meredith received a telegram from the Ole Miss admissions officer denying his application. Three days later the Ole Miss Board of Trustees voted to revise the admission rules to give the school even more leeway to deny him—or any applicant—from entering. The NAACP filed a lawsuit on Meredith’s behalf, claiming that he had been denied admission because of his race. The state courts backed the trustees with the dubious ruling that there was no official policy of segregation at Ole Miss, even if no black student had ever been enrolled there.
As the case moved through the courts, the Sovereignty Commission sent investigators Andy Hopkins and Virgil Downing to Attala County to investigate Meredith’s relationship with his parents. After arriving in the hardscrabble farming community, the agents stopped at the county courthouse to pore through public records and interviewed county officials and local police to learn more about the Merediths. The investigation turned up nothing that would sink James’s application. The records showed he had purchased 84 acres from his father in 1960 and had secured license plates for a 1959 Volkswagen and a 1952 Cadillac. Sheriff W. T. Wasson told the agents that he had “known Cap Meredith for 20 years and that he knew him to be a good colored person.” The black superintendent of the Coahoma County Separate School District, J. T. Coleman, told investigators that James Meredith’s mother, Roxie, worked for $14 a week as a cook in the Tipton Street School. Unsolicited, Coleman threatened to fire Roxie if she ever publicly supported her son’s aspiration to attend Ole Miss. “Mr. Coleman also stated that should the schools in Mississippi ever be integrated, the schools would be ruined,” Downing reported, “and that he would do everything he possibly could to keep the schools segregated.”
The agents concluded that Cap and Roxie Meredith were determined to maintain a low profile. They hoped their neighbors would not link them to the man behind the Ole Miss controversy, which had become front-page news even in rural backwaters like Attala County. The agents also knew how to let the entire county know that the “integration agitator” at Ole Miss had roots in their community. Cap and Roxie’s low profile was shattered when the investigative report was leaked to the Jackson Clarion Ledger . On June 16, 1961, the paper ran a local story headlined “Meredith Drives Cadillac and Compact to Visit Pop.” But the spies’ small-town maneuverings would soon be eclipsed by
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