On this day in 1963 by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today July 4, 2024 JULY 4, 1963 Clyde Kennard — railroaded in 1960 because he dared to try to enroll at an all-white college in Mississippi — died of cancer just months after being freed from prison. He died on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which promised “all men are created equal.” After World War II ended, Kennard taught denazification classes to German students.
6, 1958, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Hattiesburg American, questioning the logic of the “separate but equal” approach: “After our paralleled graduate schools, where do our parallels of separate but equal go? Are we to assume that paralleled hospitals are to be built for the two groups of doctors? Are we to build two bridges across the same stream in order to give equal opportunities to both groups of engineers? Are we to have two courts of law so as to give both groups of lawyers the...