When John F. Kennedy vowed in his 1961 inaugural address to be "unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human right to which this nation has always been committed," James Meredith sat up and took notice. Meredith, a student of Jackson State University and nine-year Air Force veteran, decided to assert his rights by applying to the segregated University of Mississippi.

Meredith was sent an application, and he wrote a letter to the Registrar, Robert Ellis, thanking him for the application and letting him know he was a Black applicant. Five days later, he received a telegram from Ellis saying that he'd sent in his application too late, and it wouldn't be considered.

Meredith applied a bunch of times and was and was denied admission every time. He wrote a letter to the Justice Department asking for federal help in protecting his civil rights. Meredith eventually sued the school for discrimination, but a Mississippi judge ruled that his rejection was not based on his race. The judge accused Meredith of being too "sensitive" on the issue of race. Meredith appealed and the case eventually was decided in his favor by the U.S. Supreme Court.

History repeated itself in 1962 when Governor Ross Barnett refused to obey the Court's order to allow James Meredith to enroll at Ole Miss, claiming that the rights of the state of Mississippi couldn't be overrun by the Supreme Court or any other federal force. Where've we heard that one before? Public opinion was behind Barnett. In a speech to the citizens of Mississippi, he decried the "professional agitators" and paid propagandists" who were trying to "intimidate us into submission to the tyranny of judicial oppression" (source).

After some very heated discussions with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Barnett agreed to let Meredith enroll as long as he could figure out a good cover story, but the state of Mississippi passed an emergency measure that prohibited Meredith from enrolling. The feds issued a restraining order preventing the state's measure from being enacted.

On September 20, U.S. marshals accompanied Meredith to campus, but protestors blocked his entrance. On September 29, a violent mob of 2000+ students and other protestors rioted on the Ole Miss campus, destroying property, burning cars, and assaulting the Marshals. On September 29, JFK issued a proclamation ordering the protestors to "cease and desist therefrom and to disperse and retire peaceably forthwith," but they did not cease and desist.

So in September 30, the president issued Executive Order 11053, which if we didn't know better we'd think he copy/pasted from Eisenhower's order. The National Guard was federalized, the Secretary of Defense was authorized to call out the Army, the Secretaries of the Army and Air Force could help—the usual stuff.

It took more than 30,000 U.S. Marshals and federalized Mississippi National Guardsmen to make sure Meredith got to register. It was another epic confrontation between states' rights and federal Constitutional law. In a televised address to the nation, JFK laid out the issue:

Americans are free, in short, to disagree with the law but not to disobey it. For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors. (Source)

Yowza. Get us his speechwriter now.

Meredith graduated from Ole Miss in 1963, after two years of harassment and threats. Another violent confrontation, another segregationist southern governor, another constitutional crisis between a state and the federal government. It wouldn't be the last.