Marker dedicated at site where James Meredith was shot

"He was a bad dude." 

The gentle, gray-bearded figure at the podium seemed to have little in common with the confident young man in the black-and-white photo, sun glasses and pith helmet shading him from the sun as he points the way with a walking stick. 

"He was a bad dude," today's James Meredith, now 83 and introspective, says to chuckles from the crowd as he looks wistfully at the younger version of himself, pictured inside a brochure for Thursday's Mississippi Freedom Trail marker dedication at the location where Meredith was shot in 1966.

A civil rights pioneer who integrated the University of Mississippi in 1962, Meredith didn't spend a lot of time talking about specifics of the day he was shot along U.S. 51 just south of Hernando. He preferred instead to poke a little fun at himself while acknowledging the significance of events leading to Thursday's gathering.

Meredith, 32 at the time, was on the second day of his "March Against Fear" from Memphis to Jackson, Miss., in June 1966 when  Aubrey James Norvell, an unemployed hardware salesman from Memphis, stepped from a wooded area, shouted "I only want Meredith!" and peppered him across the chest with three shots from a 16-gauge shotgun. Norvell served 18 months of a five-year sentence.

Jack Thornell, a 26-year-old photographer for The Associated Press who was traveling with Meredith, caught an anguished image of the wounded figure lying in the road moments after the shots were fired. The photo won a Pulitzer Prize in 1967.

"Get the boys back in the house."

Michael Lee, a DeSoto County supervisor, was about 6 years old when Meredith was shot during the march, which started out as a 220-mile trek with a handful of companions to call attention to the fear that was preventing African-Americans from registering to vote in Mississippi. 

"My daddy wanted us to go out on the front porch and watch when the march came by," Lee recalled. "We waited and we waited, and it never did come by. And then my daddy called and said, 'Get the boys in the house. Mr. Meredith had been shot.' I remember that."

Lee said he's happy he finally got to see Meredith in person now since he didn't see him them.

"This is long coming — it's too long," Lee told Meredith. "I'm sorry I didn't get to see you march by, but I'm glad you're here today where I can see you. And I want to thank you and apologize to you."

"There was nothing to mark this place."

Brian Hicks, director of the DeSoto County Museum, said the process leading to the marker unveiling Thursday began about 15 years ago, when a group of Japanese tourists visited the county and wanted to see the location where Meredith was shot.

"They were going to places throughout America where civil rights events had occurred, and they came to DeSoto County and wanted to see the place where James Meredith was shot," Hicks said. There was nothing to mark this place. So I decided at that time that we needed a marker, and we started our dialogue. At about that same time, (the state) came up with the idea of a marker trail, so we decided to make it a part of that."

"We're telling the Mississippi story."

Mary Margaret White is with Visit Mississippi, the official state tourism office operating under the Mississippi Development Authority umbrella. She said the Mississippi Freedom Trail program began about six years ago with plans for 33 markers statewide to chronicle the civil rights movement in the state.

"We brought together veterans, scholars, museum workers, cultural folks — all to create what we call our master list of markers," White said. "We started with 33 markers as Phase 1, and this marker was part of that list. This is No. 26 on the trail."

The large, two-sided marker, positioned on the property of a Veterans of Foreign Wars post near the location where Meredith was shot, details on one side the specifics of the march and how civil rights icons, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Roy Wilkins, came to carry on the trek while Meredith recovered from his wounds in a Memphis hospital. The other side of the marker includes photos and other tidbits, including a clipping of a newspaper story in which AP apologizes for initially reporting Meredith was killed.

"I'm very confident it's going to get done."

Despite his troubled relationship with his home state, Meredith has confidence in it. Meredith, born in Kosciusko and now living in Jackson, said Mississippi is fixing its past wrongs.

"Mississippi is the center of the black-white, rich-poor universe," Meredith said. "If Mississippi can't come up with the solution to the problem of the day, it can't be done. I'm very confident it's going to get done."