March Against Fear

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On June 5, 1966, James Meredith started a solitary March Against Fear for 220 miles from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, to protest against racism. Soon after starting his march he was shot by a sniper. When they heard the news, other civil rights campaigners, including SCLC's Martin Luther King, SNCC's Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick, decided to continue the march in Meredith's name.

On the early evening of Thursday June 16, 1966, when the marchers arrived in Greenwood, Mississippi and tried to set up camp at Stone Street Negro Elementary School, Carmichael was arrested for trespassing on public property. Carmichael was held for several hours and then rejoined the marchers at a local park where they had set up camp and were beginning a night-time rally. According to Civil Rights historian David J. Garrow's Pulitzer-Prize winning Bearing the Cross (page 481), an angry Carmichael took the speakers platform and delivered his famous "Black Power" speech. King, who had flown to Chicago on Wednesday to help organize the open housing marches, returned to Mississippi on Friday to find that the civil rights movements' internal divisions between the old guard and new guard had gone public. SNCC's Black Power slogan was now competing with SCLC's "Freedom Now" slogan.

After hospital treatment Meredith rejoined the March Against Fear on June 25, 1966. The following day, the march arrived in Jackson.