James Meredith at 93: His March Changed a Movement

Civil rights legend James Meredith thinks history got it wrong about his greatest achievement.

The 93-year-old icon believes his 1966 March Against Fear holds more significance than what made him famous: becoming the first Black student at the University of Mississippi. Through his granddaughter Janae Knight, Meredith explained that integrating Ole Miss was personal, but the march "included the masses gaining citizenship."

Friday marks 60 years since Meredith began his solo 220-mile walk from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. Wearing a pith helmet, the Air Force veteran set out to challenge white supremacy and inspire Black Mississippians to vote.

On day two near Hernando, a white man emerged with a shotgun. Meredith ran, but three blasts struck him, and he collapsed on the gravel shoulder of Highway 51.

The Associated Press mistakenly reported him dead. Meredith survived, and while he recovered in a Memphis hospital, civil rights leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael rushed to Mississippi to continue his march.

What started as one man's mission became a movement of thousands. King led marchers to Neshoba County, where three civil rights workers had been murdered two years earlier, kneeling in prayer outside the jail that had held them.

In Greenwood, Carmichael unveiled a phrase that would define a generation: "Black power." The slogan's popularity exploded, foreshadowing the Black Panthers and reshaping the civil rights conversation.

The Ripple Effect

Meredith rejoined the march before it ended at Mississippi's Capitol with 15,000 people gathered. King called it "the greatest demonstration for freedom ever held in the state of Mississippi."

Author Aram Goudsouzian, who wrote a book on the march, calls it the last great march of the Civil Rights Movement. It was "the last time they would seek a shared goal, despite ideological differences."

Meredith stands alone now as the last living major figure from that generation of civil rights leaders. He was interviewed alongside King, Carmichael, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young Jr., and Floyd McKissick on "Meet the Press" in 1966, the only one without an organization backing him.

Mississippi Today reports that Meredith will celebrate his 93rd birthday on June 25, one day before the 60th anniversary of his march's triumphant conclusion in Jackson.

A commemoration program honors the march's legacy Thursday at Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson, ensuring a new generation remembers the day one man's courage became thousands marching for freedom.