Word: merediths
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...Dirt!" Characteristically, Meredith had invited neither the companionship nor the moral support of civil rights Establishmentarians; only half a dozen personal friends were at his side. But by the time he got to De Soto County across the Mississippi-Tennessee border, there was a small entourage of newsmen, along with some 15 Mississippi state troopers, sheriff's deputies...
...miles beyond Hernando, Miss., Meredith was plodding doggedly up a small hill when a white man popped up from the brush along the highway. "Ja-ames Meredith! Ja-ames Meredith!" he cried. "I only want Ja-ames Meredith!" Meredith's companions scrambled for cover, stumbling over one another. "Look out, Jim, he's got a gun!" cried one. "Hit the dirt!" called an other. Startled, Meredith hesitated. A 16-gauge shotgun roared once, and a spray of bird shot blasted into Meredith's right side. He fell to his knees and began to wriggle across the highway...
Death Was Temporary. Meredith, blood oozing from some 70 pellet wounds in head and body, was whisked to Memphis in an ambulance. Because of a ludicrous series of gaffes by the Associated Press, millions of shocked Americans thought Meredith had been killed (see PRESS). As doctors at Memphis' William F. Bowld Hospital soon discovered, he was only suffering from "multiple superficial abrasions...
Ronald Alford, 24, was having a hectic day. Illness and vacation had left him the only reporter in the Memphis bureau of the Associated Press. That morning he had been trudging a dusty road south of the city covering James Meredith's march into Mississippi, but at 1:30 he had returned to the unmanned office. Now the news was coming through that Meredith had been shot, and Alford was in a bind...
...that at 4:29 Memphis time A.P. had sent off its first bulletin, which simply reported the shooting. Alford was still desperately trying to catch up, and when an Appeal reporter called with an account of what had happened, the A.P. man picked up an extension to listen in. "Meredith has been shot in the back and the head," the reporter said. In the clamor, Alford thought he heard "Meredith has been shot dead...