On September 30, 1960, JFK, RFK, and Governor Ross Barnett negotiated a plan to allow James Meredith to become a resident on the Campus of Ole Miss.

President Kennedy announced Meredith’s residence to the nation via a television press conference September 30, 1962.

The Klan and segregationists began entering the campus during day light hours September 30, 1962. U.S. Marshals were on campus. A riot which had been incited by Governor Ross Barnett turned into a full insurrection. JFK called in the National Guard and the army. The army had never been utilized to protect the rights of a citizen.

Two people were killed, and nearly 200 were injured during the Insurrection on the campus of the University of Mississippi, September 30, 1962.

October 1, 1962, James Meredith attended his first class at the University of Mississippi.

He graduated on August 18, 1963, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in political science.  The U.S. Marshals escorted Meredith and a caravan of supporters to Memphis.

One of the government’s officials informed Meredith he was on the Klan’s hit list and recommended he move out of the state.

Meredith relocated to Nigeria and enrolled in a master’s degree program. He obtained a master’s degree in government and economics from the University of Ibadan in 1965.

He and his family moved to Manhattan, and he enrolled in law school at Columbia University in 1965. His first wife Mary June Wiggins Meredith became a local schoolteacher.

On June 5, 1966, James Meredith started “Meredith Walk Against Fear,” a 225 mile walk from the Tennessee-Mississippi line on Highway 51 to Jackson with 16 men. Some were from Memphis and a few travelled from NY.

Meredith sough to encourage blacks to register to vote, and to show black men they had nothing to fear by walking the highways and byways in Mississippi.