James Meredith sent the following letter dated January 31, 1961, with his completed application, to Mr. Robert B. Ellis, the Registrar of the then all-white state-funded University of Mississippi. Meredith had completed two years, with good grades, at the historically black university Jackson State University. He had also served in the United States Air Force from 1951-1960. Meredith was denied admission to Mississippi based on race, despite his credentials, references and the 1954 US Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. However, 20 months later, on October 1, 1962, Meredith enrolled in the University of Mississippi and became the first black student to attend the state-funded institution. Letter dated January 31, 1961, to Robert B. Ellis, Registrar University of Mississippi from James Meredith submitting application for admission.
Meredith “was allowed to” register at Mississippi only after court battles that went all the way to the US Supreme Court and through federal intervention.
The US Supreme Court supported the ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit which ruled that Meredith had the right to be admitted to Mississippi. During this fight, Meredith was advised by Medgar Evers, head of Mississippi chapter of the NAACP and backed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
It wasn’t until President Kennedy sent in US Deputy Marshals that Meredith was able to register. Meredith “was registered at the school after a violent confrontation between students and Deputies. One hundred and sixty Deputies were injured – 28 by gunfire.” Meredith was protected around the clock by Deputy Marshals for the next year “going everywhere he went on campus, enduring the same taunts and jibes, the same heckling, the same bombardment of cherry bombs, water balloons, and trash, as Meredith did. They made sure that Meredith could attend the school of his choice.”
