Down in Mississippi: the shooting of protester James Meredith 38 years ago, searingly documented by a rookie photographer, galvanized the civil rights movement.(Indelible Images)

Publication: Smithsonian

Publication Date: 01-FEB-05

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One sweltering morning in June 1966, James Meredith set out from Memphis with an African walking stick in one hand, a Bible in the other and a singular mission in mind. The 32-year-old Air Force veteran and Columbia University law student planned to march 220 miles to the Mississippi state capital of Jackson, to prove that a black man could walk free in the South. The Voting Rights Act had been passed only the year before, and his goal was to inspire African-Americans to register and go to the polls. "I was at war against fear," he recalls. "I was fighting for full citizenship for me and my kind."

It wasn't the first time Meredith had charged into hostile territory all but alone. Four years earlier, he'd become the first black person to enroll at the University...

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