American Essence

The Unstoppable James Meredith

In this installment of ‘When Character Counted,’ we meet a fiercely independent man who helped end segregation.
The Unstoppable James Meredith
James Meredith walking to class at University of Mississippi, accompanied by U.S. marshals. Library of Congress. Public Domain
Jeff Minick
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On Sept. 30, 1962, when it was announced that James Meredith would be permitted to enroll at the University of Mississippi, riots broke out on the campus.
In what some historians and commentators called the “last battle of the Civil War,” more than 2,000 students and outsiders, some of them armed with guns and Molotov cocktails, attacked the federal marshals dispatched to guard Meredith. The fighting continued throughout the night, with the mob surrounding the university’s administration hall, the Lyceum, firing off shots and threatening to break inside the building.
Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.