In the summer of 1966, the state of race relations in the United States stood at the crossroads whereas today a resurgence of white supremacist ideology is systematically eviscerating voting rights and representation for the nationally oppressed
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Wednesday June 10, 2026
Political Review
On June 5, 1966, James Meredith, a University of Mississippi graduate, set out to conduct a “March Against Fear” from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi.
Meredith had been admitted to the whites-only “Ole Miss” university in Oxford during 1962 when a racist mob sought to prevent his attendance at the higher educational institution.
During the unrest, two people were killed, a French journalist and a white repairman. In addition, over 100 federal marshals were deployed by then President John F. Kennedy to ensure the enrollment of Meridith. After his admission, the situation calmed and Meredith graduated a year later, becoming the first African American to do so in the history of the university.
Meredith, who was not a member of any Civil Rights organization, began his journey on that Sunday afternoon to walk more than 200 miles to the state capital of Mississippi at Jackson. On the second day of his march, Meredith was shot in an ambush by a white Memphis resident named Aubrey Norvell, 40, just outside of Hernando, Mississippi, who was stalking him along Highway 51.
Meredith was wounded in his head, neck, back and leg by the shotgun pellets fired by Norvell who was hidden in the trees lining the highway. He survived the attack and would later rejoin the march after several Civil Rights organizations vowed to continue the walk to the state capital.
After the wounding of Meredith, leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) held a meeting in Memphis and pledged to continue the march. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Urban League also attended the Memphis meeting. Roy Wilkins, the then Executive Secretary of the National NAACP, did not join the march, yet Whitney Young, leader of the National Urban League (NUL), did join the march later as it approached Jackson.
Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture), the recently elected Chairman of SNCC, had been selected with a mandate to forge an independent political position. Carmichael had participated in the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964 where the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) recruited people while engaging in a voter registration drive that year. The MFDP took a delegation to Atlantic City, New Jersey to challenge the seating of the all-white Democratic Party delegates at the Democratic National Convention. Although the challenge did not succeed, the activities of the MFDP set the stage for independent political organizing in the South.
After the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965, Carmichael and other SNCC organizers moved into Lowndes County, Alabama to build alongside local activists an independent political organization. The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) was the original Black Panther Party utilizing the animal as a symbol of self -defense and independent politics.
It was within this framework that the Mississippi March Against Fear was held. As the march proceeded towards Jackson a debate between Carmichael and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President of the SCLC, erupted over nonviolence as a principle as opposed to self-defense and the quest for political power.
SNCC had already taken a firm position against the U.S. genocidal war against Vietnam and the draft as a whole. Several of its members were threatened with prosecution for their refusal to abide by the selective service system which they accused of being racist.
Dr. King and SCLC did not come out against the Vietnam War and the draft until the opening months of the following year of 1967. During the March Against Fear, the central differences between SNCC and SCLC revolved around the call for Black Power which was made by Field Secretary Willie Ricks (now known as Mukasa Dada) and later Carmichael.
Floyd McKissick, the Executive Director of CORE, did endorse the Black Power slogan and seemed to be in alliance with SNCC. By the time the march reached Jackson, 15,000 people had joined the manifestation.
From Freedom Now to Black Power
This long march in June 1966 represented a turning point in the African American struggle. The slogan demanding Black Power was open to interpretation by a variety of political forces including SNCC, CORE and others.
Many media and political forces associated the slogan with the rise in urban rebellions which had taken place between 1963 and 1966. In May of 1966, prior to the March Against Fear, a rebellion erupted in the Hough Section of Cleveland. The previous year in Los Angeles, the Watts Rebellion was the largest of such incidents in U.S. history. During 1964, rebellions erupted in Harlem, New York, Philadelphia, and several cities in New Jersey. In 1963, a section of the African American community had rebelled during the tense mass struggles to end segregation in the city of Birmingham, Alabama and Cambridge, Maryland.
The SNCC leadership under Carmichael did not condemn the rebellions while viewing them as a natural outcome of the oppressive conditions facing African Americans. After the march in Mississippi, Dr. King returned to Chicago where the SCLC had opened a campaign for open housing and the eradication of slums.
On July 12, a rebellion erupted on the West Side of Chicago which lasted four days prompting the deployment of the Illinois National Guard to put down the uprising. The rebellion was obviously against the horrendous conditions under which many African Americans lived in Chicago. The community had been outraged by the refusal of the city administration under Mayor Richard Daley, Sr. to heed to the demands made by Dr. King and the Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Al Raby.
After the Summer of 1966, the rebellions would escalate for the next four years. In Detroit during late July 1967, the largest urban rebellion took place outstripping the events in Watts, Newark, Cleveland and other cities. There were more than 160 rebellions during 1967 prompting the establishment of a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder by the then Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The findings of the panel headed by-then Illinois Governor Otto Kerner said that the U.S. was heading towards two societies: one black, one white, separate and unequal. The Kerner Commission made sweeping recommendations for reforms involving race relations. However, the Johnson administration ignored the findings and recommendations of the Kerner Commission as the political atmosphere for additional Civil Rights legislation had soured due to the rebellions and the call for Black Power.
Relevance of the March Against Fear to the Struggle Today for Voting Rights
Some six decades after the March Against Fear, the Supreme Court in their 6-3 ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais decision has gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. During the march through Mississippi in June 1966 when the call for Black Power arose, there had not been any African American Congressional or Senatorial representatives from Mississippi since the period of Reconstruction when Hiram Rhodes Revels (Senate), the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate, filled a seat during Reconstruction (1870–1871); and Blanche Kelso Bruce (Senate), served a full term in the U.S. Senate (1875–1881) and John Roy Lynch (House), served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1873–1877, 1881–1883).
Even after the mass Civil Rights Movement and the March Against Fear, it would take more than two decades for an African American to be elected to the House of Representatives from Mississippi. Mike Espy was the first African American to represent Mississippi in the House of Representatives since Reconstruction, serving from 1987 to 1993. Bennie Thompson, the only current Congressperson from the state has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1993.
With the Conservative majority on the Supreme Court and within the House of Representatives and the Senate, they are clearly committed to the mass disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South where the majority of this oppressed nation still resides. The evisceration of the Voting Rights Act coincides with the striking down of affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion by the Supreme Court. These policy decisions are designed to weaken the political and social status of African Americans.
These developments will require the reemergence of a mass democratic movement for full equality and self-determination. The shooting of James Meredith on that Mississippi highway sixty years ago provides an indication of the level of sacrifice and struggle required to gain national liberation and social emancipation in the 21st century.
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Distributed By: THE PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION PROJECT–
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