Forrest County native Clyde Kennard was a pioneer in the effort to desegregate higher education in Mississippi. Born in Hattiesburg on June 12, 1927, he moved to Chicago at age twelve, served seven years in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper, studied at the University of Chicago, and returned to Mississippi after his stepfather's death to run the family farm. Beginning in 1955, he sought admission to the all-white Mississippi Southern College in Hattiesburg, but college president William D. McCain, state officials, and State Sovereignty Commission investigators worked to block him. On September 15, 1959, after again being denied admission, he was arrested on trumped-up charges of speeding and illegal possession of whiskey and was convicted. After the Forrest County Cooperative foreclosed on his poultry farm, a cooperative employee later claimed Kennard had planned a burglary involving five bags of chicken feed, and Kennard was convicted as an accessory to burglary and sentenced to the maximum penalty of seven years. At Parchman Farm he labored in cotton fields, developed cancer, and was denied proper medical treatment even after surgery and advice that he be paroled. As the NAACP and national figures including Martin Luther King and Dick Gregory pressed for his release, Governor Ross Barnett finally ordered him freed in the spring of 1963. Kennard underwent surgery in Chicago, but he died on July 4, 1963, at age thirty-six. Later investigations showed he had been framed, and on May 17, 2006, the Forrest County Circuit Court filed papers exonerating him.