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U.S. History 1877-Present 11.4: Ole Miss 2435 Views
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Description:
Ole Miss had another thing coming if they thought they could get away with staying segregated. And by another thing we mean several thousand troops.
Transcript
- 00:00
when we've got a good thing going we just don't want to stop. sometimes
- 00:06
when we have a taste of a good thing we realized that one tiny little taste [person bungee jumping]
- 00:10
could never be enough and should never be enough. imagine only getting one piece
- 00:15
of candy to last a lifetime. unless it were an Everlasting Gobstopper No Deal.
- 00:20
well that's how it was with civil rights. the door to equality had been cracked
Full Transcript
- 00:25
open ever so slightly and now all activists could imagine was busting that
- 00:30
baby wide open. how could they stop with integration in public schools and not be
- 00:34
expected to take things further? well activists such as Thurgood Marshall
- 00:38
with the help of the NAACP had exposed a weakness to the legality of
- 00:43
Jim Crow laws in the field of education. these same legal expectations had to
- 00:48
extend to the realm of higher education right? right.
- 00:51
the NAACP started working on a plan to see integration at the highest [Thurgood Marshall pictured]
- 00:55
levels of education the fact that notable black leaders had been turned
- 00:59
away from more than one prestigious university based solely on the color of
- 01:03
their skin probably provided some good incentive. Thurgood Marshall was a
- 01:08
perfect example of this kind of discrimination since he was turned away
- 01:12
from the University of Maryland law school. they don't put that fact in their
- 01:17
recruitment brochures .we look but rather than Maryland the NAACP took aim
- 01:22
at a school in the deep south what better university to make an example of
- 01:26
than the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss right in the heart of dixie there, [University of Mississippi pictured]
- 01:31
hmm well the NAACP found the perfect
- 01:34
candidate in james Meredith an educated black War veteran who was determined to
- 01:39
batter down the doors of Ole Miss and receive equal access to education. though
- 01:44
he was totally qualified Meredith's application Ole Miss was rejected in
- 01:49
1961. insert a complete lack of surprise here.
- 01:53
the NAACP took the case all the way to the Supreme Court which ruled in
- 01:58
1962 that Ole Miss had to admit Meredith. they were probably also like didn't we
- 02:03
already cast a ruling on this? well Mississippi's segregationist governor
- 02:08
Ross Barnett wasn't about to take this lying down. he claimed that the federal
- 02:13
government had no right to declare laws that were
- 02:15
loathsome to the people. he cried out that this would be a battle as great as [Ross Barnett speaks]
- 02:19
the Civil War and that it was up to Mississippi to fight for its rights. well
- 02:24
President Kennedy on the other hand was determined in make Mississippi behaved
- 02:28
itself. though Meredith showed up to school with federal marshals guarding
- 02:32
him unfortunately the marshals didn't
- 02:34
intimidate the mob that was there to stop Meredith. Barnett who was on site as
- 02:39
well had whipped them into a fury and they attacked by throwing rocks bottles
- 02:43
and bricks. the marshals thought this was pretty rude till they shot tear gas into
- 02:47
the crowd. in the end two people were killed and many more wounded and JFK had [federal marshals stand in a line]
- 02:52
to send in 30,000 army troops to settle everybody down. when the dust cleared
- 02:57
Meredith was allowed to attend Ole Miss though he did so with marshals watching
- 03:01
his back the entire time. though there was a ton of segregationist backlash
- 03:05
that followed this event it's still seen as one of the greatest victories of the
- 03:09
civil rights movement .the shocking violence made many moderates in the
- 03:13
south start pressuring the extremity you know chill out. gradually the power of
- 03:19
the racist citizens councils and radical politicians like Barnett began to erode.
- 03:24
some called this the last battle of the Civil War and once again it was a battle
- 03:29
lost by the south. but the battle over best regional cuisine in America is
- 03:33
still far from over. the north has pizza of the South scores [people pick food from a table]
- 03:37
high with fried chicken. Oh a Dixie may lose a point or two for grits.
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