Posted on by Erik Chipchase

gregorygalloway:

On 5 June 1966, James Meredith began a 220-mile march from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MS.

The 32-year-old Meredith, who had integrated the University of Mississippi four years
earlier, organized the one-man march to encourage African Americans in
Mississippi to register to vote and overcome a fear of violence.

When he crossed into Mississippi on the morning of 6 June, Meredith was shot 3 times by a sniper, and hit in his head, neck, back and legs . His assailant, an unemployed member of the Ku Klux Klan from Jackson, MS, was quickly apprehended by police. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he served 18 months).

As Meredith recuperated from his wounds,
people gathered in his hospital room in Hernando, MS to resume what was now called the
“Meredith March.” Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick, the marchers
walked for nearly three weeks, helping to register thousands of
African-American voters along the way.

Meredith himself rejoined the
pilgrimage on its final day, June 26, as more than 12,000
protesters entered Jackson surrounded by cheering crowds.

Posted on by Erik Chipchase

pattern-53-enfield:

“You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;–liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;–liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear;–liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage;–liberty to kill these children with impunity, when the murder cannot be proven by one of pure white blood. This is the kind of liberty–the liberty to do wrong–which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell.” – Gen. David Hunter, letter to Jefferson Davis, 1863

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.