While Eagles says he would like to see expressions such as "civil rights" on the Meredith statue that he believes would be more appropriate to the integration of Ole Miss, Meredith likely would have objected. Meredith is quoted as saying, "Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind." Four years after he integrated Ole Miss---sending shock waves across the nation---Meredith undertook a "March Against Fear" to win voting rights for Mississippi Negroes and was shot down by a white racist south of Hernando, Miss., on June 6, 1966. After he underwent surgery in the hospital, Meredith's several marching companions were allowed to visit him in his hospital room. And when one told him, "All the civil rights groups are sending members to finish your march," Meredith shook his head and said, "it won't be my march" and turned his face to the wall. Such was his attitude towards civil rights organizations. Their leaders, however, did flock to Mississippi and did complete the march Meredith began, and Meredith did join them after he recovered from his wounds and accepted their support. The upshot of his sacrifice was to pry open the State's voting rolls to blacks as once again Federal officials were sent in to the State, this time to register black voters who had been denied the franchise. Their votes sounded the death knell for white demagogues who henceforth had to squelch their racist to remarks, or face defeat at the hands of angry black voters. Together with the integration of Ole Miss, Meredith's second strategic strike against the denial of voting rights literally marked the beginning of the end of Mississippi despotism---and by extension the end of Jim Crow everywhere in the South. Extending the franchise to all also fulfilled the hopes of Southern white moderates who sought to put an end to political demagoguery. They shared the vision of Editor Ralph McGill of The Atlanta Constitution who wrote in the early Fifties: "I see a new South coming over the horizon."
At the dedication of the Meredith monument on October 1, 2006, the 44th anniversary of the Ole Miss integration, Rep. John Lewis (D.-Ga.), a former civil rights activist, delivered the keynote address to an audience of 1,500. "With the unveiling of this monument," Lewis said, "we free ourselves from the chains of a difficult past. Today we can celebrate a new day, a new beginning, the birth of a new South and a new America that is more free, more fair, and more just than ever before." Whatever the inscription on Meredith's statue at Ole Miss, it is hard to think of any one individual apart from the Rev. Martin Luther King who, by his determination and courage, did more to change the South and the nation for the better. #
(Disclosure: Sherwood Ross accompanied Meredith as his "press coordinator" on the 1966 March Against Fear in Mississippi. Contact him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
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