James Meredith’s One-Man 'March Against Fear'
On June 5, 1966, James Meredith stepped out on a lone mission to walk 210 miles from Memphis to Jackson, Miss. in what he called the “March Against Fear.”
On June 5, 1966, James Meredith stepped out on a lone mission to walk 210 miles from Memphis to Jackson, Miss. in what he called the “March Against Fear.” The next day, Meredith was injured by a shotgun loaded with birdshot. The pellets struck Meredith in the neck, head, legs, and right side of his body. Despite the severity of the attack, Meredith survived his injuries.
“I’d known for a long time that fear was the all prevailing force that kept white supremacy effective,” said Meredith, the first Black person to attend the University of Mississippi, in an interview for the Visionary Project. “The reason I was unarmed was because I’d decided it wasn’t valid anymore. So I was gonna prove to the people that they didn’t have nothing to fear.”
Being a part of the movement that helped bolster the voter registration numbers was something Meredith could be proud of. He never spoke much about the shooter Aubrey Norvell, who was caught on camera in the bushes as Meredith lay wounded on the ground. Jack Thornell took the photograph, which won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Photography. Although Norvell’s arrest wasn’t the victory he was looking for when he took his first steps of the “March Against Fear,” it was still a success to him.
“Except for a few bird shots, it worked out because the man that shot me wasn’t from Mississippi,” said Meredith in the same interview. “So that enabled the Mississippi authorities to send him to Parchman prison, which everybody’s heard of. He was the first white man to go to prison for shooting a Black.”
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