Capitol Rally

On June 26, 1966, James Meredith's March Against Fear, continued by major civil rights leaders after Meredith was shot and wounded in Hernando, Mississippi, ended its three-week trek from Memphis with a rally at the State Capitol in Jackson. Large rallies had been held along the way, and some marchers suffered attacks of violence in Greenwood, Philadelphia, and Canton. As national news coverage spread, activists from across the country joined the final leg into Jackson, and the marchers stopped at Tougaloo College before entering the city, where more people joined and James Brown, Dick Gregory, and Marlon Brando were among the celebrities present. The next day an estimated 15,000 marchers entered Jackson in several streams, the largest civil rights demonstration in Mississippi history, led by Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Jr. with Coretta, Floyd McKissick, and James Meredith, along with hundreds of veterans of the movement. Welcomed by some and jeered at and threatened by others, the marchers gathered at about 4:00 p.m. at the back of the Capitol, as arranged by state officials, to hear speeches and join in freedom songs. For about two hours the crowd heard Lawrence Guyot, Owen Brooks, Alvin Poussaint, Carmichael, McKissick, King, the wounded Meredith, and others, with Andrew Young serving as emcee. The day brought together major civil rights figures and organizations, introduced new urgency and energy of Black Power into the movement, and ended on a high point of black pride and solidarity. Students had also been prominent in a June-July 1965 protest at the Mississippi Capitol led by the Freedom Democratic Party against the Mississippi Legislature during a special session to repeal discriminatory voting laws. Protesters argued that the legislators had not been elected by a majority of voting-age Mississippians and that the legislature was therefore illegally constituted and in violation of federal law. On June 14, 1965, about 500 protesters, about half of them teenagers, were arrested by Jackson police, taken to the state fairgrounds in paddy wagons and garbage trucks, and incarcerated in facilities usually reserved for livestock.

Jackson, Mississippi · United States