Friday night's presidential debate marked a fairly underreported milestone. On Oct. 1, 1962, James Meredith became the first Black student to enter the University of Mississippi, after a legal battle that escalated all the way to the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court.
The drama had just begun, however. Mississipi Gov. Ross Barnett opposed Meredith's admission with a violent standoff that erupted in riots and ended with two people dead. The federal government intervened when Attorney General Robert Kennedy dispatched marshalls to prevent Meredith from being lynched. Meredith stayed for two years under federal guard and eventually graduated in 1964.
A generation later another Black man entered the University of Mississippi under federal protection...this time as a presidential nominee. We can argue whether having that evolution take half a century is a good or bad thing, but it happened. The University of Mississippi and Gov. Haley Barbour opened their arms to welcome a Black man, not as a student but potentially as the next president of the United States.
On CBS' Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer remembered it in more personal terms. It's a milestone we should all pause to acknowledge.
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