Word: merediths
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...have no doubt that James Meredith knows that he could get a better education at Harvard or Western Reserve or California or any other university you care to name. But a question of principle remains: as long as he and other Mississippi Negroes pay taxes that help to support the state university, they have a right to enjoy its dubious benefits...
...instead of moving on to the next classes, a crowd of students gathered in front of Conner Hall, where a campus newcomer named James H. Meredith had just completed a political science class. As Meredith appeared in the doorway, the waiting students began hissing him. He was a fellow student, a fellow Mississippian. and a fellow human being. But these likenesses were submerged by a terrible intensity of difference...
...Smile, Nigger!" Even if there had been no students jeering him and no U.S. marshals guarding him, Meredith would have been a strange figure on that campus. At 29. he was visibly older than his fellow students. His somber suit, neatly knotted tie and shined shoes contrasted with the campus' standard male garb of white shirt, khaki trousers and scuffed loafers. And above all other differences, he was a Negro, the only one in the entire state of Mississippi who had broken through the public education system's segregation barrier...
Escorted by half a dozen stony-faced U.S. marshals, he began walking toward the U.S. Government automobile that was waiting to take him back to his dormitory. "Hey. taxi!" a student yelled. "I wish I had a taxi to take me around campus.'' The hissing intensified, and Meredith quickened his pace. As he reached the car and faced a battery of waiting news photographers, the students broke into loud jeers. "Smile, nigger, smile!" they called. The marshals hustled him into the back seat and the car drove away, followed by two U.S. Army weapons carriers loaded with steel...
Crying All the Way. Shameful as Meredith's ordeal was. it had its inspiring aspects. Meredith's very presence on that campus was an affirmation that the individual's rights under the Constitution are to be enforced against whatever opposition, at whatever cost. The state government had tried to keep him out of the university, and a frenzied mob had fought a bloody, nightlong battle to get him out. But all in vain, for his right to be there was backed up by the might of the national Government. Only in America, perhaps, would the Government send...