James Meredith Puts Ole Miss on Trial

Abstract On June 25, 1962, James Meredith got a major break in his lawsuit against Ole Miss. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District in New Orleans found that he had been rejected by the university solely because of race, thereby overturning the lower court’s decision. Four months earlier, Federal District Court Judge Sidney C. Mize, a graduate of the University of Mississippi Law School and a staunch segregationist, had found that Meredith had failed to prove that Ole Miss had a policy of denying admission to Negro applicants. Now the appellate court reversed Mize’s decision. Writing the opinion for the three-judge panel, Judge John Minor Wisdom wrote that “a full review of the record leads inescapably to the conclusion that from the moment the defendants discovered that Meredith was a Negro they engaged in a carefully calculated campaign of delay, harassment, and masterful inactivity . . . a defense designed to discourage and defeat by evasive tactics.” The court ordered the university to admit Meredith and to take all measures to accelerate his admission.