James Meredith had integrated the University of Mississippi in 1962. On June 5, 1966, at 32 and a law student at Columbia, he left Memphis on foot for Jackson, unarmed, carrying a Bible and an ebony cane, with six friends beside him. He wanted only Black men alongside, and he wanted to show Mississippi's roughly 450,000 disenfranchised Black residents that they could register. "If I can do it, maybe they can, too," he wrote. He chose not to invite the civil rights organizations, saying a large crowd could burden Black families at crop-planting time, and he said he was "at war against fear," hoping the walk would help him overcome the fear he had felt in 1962.
On the second day, June 6, after about 28 miles, a gunman fired from the bushes along Highway 51 near Hernando. Aubrey James Norvell, a former Memphis hardware clerk, hit Meredith in the neck, head, legs and right side with birdshot. The Associated Press first reported him dead, but the wounds were not deep. Minutes passed before an ambulance came, and he was taken to a hospital in Memphis. Photographer Jack Thornell took a picture of the fallen Meredith, with the gunman visible in the bushes, and it won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize. Norvell, arrested by state troopers and FBI agents, pleaded guilty and served 18 months of a five-year sentence.
The march that kept his name
Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Floyd McKissick, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young visited Meredith in the Memphis hospital and agreed to continue the walk in his name. About twenty marchers resumed on June 7 along Highway 51. SNCC, SCLC, CORE, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Medical Committee for Human Rights joined. The Deacons for Defense and Justice, from Louisiana, provided armed guards. Wilkins and Young left early, and Wilkins withdrew over the guns.
Greenwood to Canton
On June 16 in Greenwood, marchers tried to camp at Stone Street Negro Elementary School, and Carmichael was arrested for trespassing. Released after several hours, he spoke at a park rally of about 3,000, and historian David Garrow places his Black Power speech there. On June 23 at Canton, marchers who pitched tents on a schoolhouse lawn were tear-gassed and beaten, and several were wounded. Later King and Ralph Abernathy led about 300 marchers to Philadelphia for a memorial service for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, killed in 1964. The sheriff blocked them from the courthouse steps.
Jackson
Meredith rejoined for the last stretch, and on June 26 the marchers entered Jackson. Estimates of the crowd run from 10,000 to more than 15,000, and it was the largest civil rights demonstration in the state's history. Chants of both Black power and freedom now showed a split over direction. Counts of new Black voters registered along the route range from about 2,500 to more than 4,000, among them 1,422 signed up by federal examiners.
The Lyceum is where Meredith enrolled in 1962, and the Grenada Freedom Movement Marker recalls the school crisis in Grenada that September.