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James Meredith is proud of his alma mater.
“I think (the debate) is the greatest thing to happen in the history of Western Christian civilization since the discovery of America,” Meredith said.
Meredith was the first man to integrate the University of Mississippi at the age of 29.
His registration in 1962 subsequently turned the university into a battlefield, with many Mississippians and the state government against Meredith and the federal government.
His enrollment was a historical event, forever changing Ole Miss and the way people remember the university and Mississippi.
Meredith is now a 75-year-old who exercises every morning and spends his days raising three of his 10 grandchildren.
“It’s the hardest thing, getting old,” Meredith said. “I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do; then I figured it out. Old people are supposed to take care of their grandbabies.”
Meredith has three sons (one of whom died recently from complications due to lupus), one daughter and one stepson.
His late son Joseph and his stepson are both graduates of the University of Mississippi.
Joseph graduated from Ole Miss with a Ph.D. at the top of his class.
“(Joseph’s graduation) was my proudest moment because he graduated at the top of his class,” Meredith said. “Everyone, including the white faculty and staff, recognized that he did that.”
Concerning the current presidential election and the upcoming 2008 presidential debate, he was reluctant to tell who he was voting for.
“It doesn’t matter who is president; my situation remains the same,” Meredith said. “The president is the last person in America who can make a difference.”
Meredith said a good example of this is when everyone credited President George W. Bush for wrapping up the last election as soundly as he did, when in fact Meredith said he believes it was Bush’s Southern Baptist following that helped him there.
“The Southern Baptists dominate the South and America; they are the only church with power,” Meredith said. “The Catholics thought they had power, but the Southern Baptists took it all from them.”
Meredith does, however, believe Sen. Barack Obama has a better understanding of race and color than John McCain, but said he would have to continue his research before being able to decide upon a candidate to support.
“I believe what Barack Obama said when he said he believes America is the only country that could have produced him,” Meredith said. “Obama is a symbol of the good in the U.S.”
Meredith said the most important issue to him is the economic situation in the U.S.
He said blacks in America make up only 20 percent of the poor.
Meredith added that race and color have been used as a decoy that is preventing people from dealing with the real issues.
“The focus needs to be on the poor, not the black poor,” Meredith said.
He compared the current economic situation to post-Civil War days in the U.S. when most blacks lived on the plantations where they worked in the Mississippi Delta, whereas poor whites in the Delta were forgotten about.
“If you had a million-dollar Kentucky race horse, you would take care of it,” Meredith said.
“They stayed on the plantations, they ate better food, had better houses and they were taken care of better than the poor whites,” he said.
Meredith said politicians used the blacks to keep whites of lower financial status proud to be so.
He also said politicians have done nothing but make the situation worse with the institution of welfare in the U.S. He said the Democrats’ welfare program broke up the solidarity of families.
President Clinton discontinued welfare to encourage male leaders of households to work, Meredith said.
Republicans then came behind and encouraged females within the household to work.
Meredith said he wonders who the government expected to raise the children.
“I ran into a man this morning at the health club, and he said he is raising his grandson because the child’s parents have to be gone all of the time to work,” Meredith said. “The black/white situation is still a problem here, but no longer the problem.”
Meredith delivered a speech to kick off the Stand Against AIDS march that began in Jackson and ended in Oxford last week.
He said he had no involvement with the march itself but was told his March Against Fear in 1966 was the inspiration for their march.
“I told them I would start the march but under no condition would I go to Oxford,” Meredith said. “If I came to Oxford with them all anybody would talk about is 1962. I wanted their stories to be told. It’s their turn.”
When asked about his days working for Sen. Jesse Helms, he said he wrote to everyone in Congress and Helms was the only one who had a spot for him.
“Mostly I wanted access to the Library of Congress and to try to shake the civil rights label I had,” Meredith said. “Civil rights was never a goal of mine; it was an insult to me.”
Meredith said civil rights leaders were only fighting for three of the 10 rights everyone had and felt everyone deserved to have all of them.
When asked about his March Against Fear (a march from Memphis to Jackson aimed at registering black voters), he said it was not about civil rights.
Instead, it was about showing blacks they didn’t have to be afraid of being shot or lynched for trying to register to vote in the state of Mississippi in 1966, Meredith said.
“Fear is the most powerful emotion between two men, even more powerful than love,” Meredith said. “I wanted to show people there wasn’t anything to be afraid of.”
In 1966, Meredith was shot while participating in the march in Hernando.
“You understand that the man who shot me wasn’t from Mississippi; he was from somewhere else,” Meredith said. “You know he went to Parchman Penitentiary for shooting me? I believe he was the first white man to go to prison for shooting a black man in the state of Mississippi.”
Meredith said he also believes Ole Miss is ahead of any other university in the nation when it comes to the issue of race and color.
“Ole Miss is a place that educates leaders,” Meredith said. “Ole Miss creates leaders; that’s why I wanted to go to Ole Miss. My greatest disappointment, however, is that blacks who graduate from Ole Miss have not done their part. They aren’t going back and educating their communities the way I had hoped.”
Meredith said he doesn’t wish to be remembered for what people refer to as heroic moments during the Civil Rights Movement and that all he wanted to be was an inspiration to others.
“That’s all I ever wanted,” Meredith said. “To be an inspiration to those after me.”
John