Johnson: Mississippi civil rights journey shows how far we've come; we can't go back

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Yesterday is today's foundation. It reveals our strengths and cracks.

That's why I love history. It cannot be changed and ignoring it only leads to ignorance -- to the risk of repeating its worst.

History reminds us who've been, our heroes and villains, our champions and cowards.

In my weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, I feature little-known or largely forgotten historical moments or people to, in part, chronicle how far we've come. Often in just my lifetime. Though in these perilous times when the Trump administration is unceasingly and intently trying to drag us back to beyond Jim Crow, it's easier to believe we've not gotten very far at all.

Brown men and women are being snatched from our streets for lack of a piece of paper from the government. Attacks on Blackness abound from every arm of this administration. Hard-truth photos about enslavement are yanked from walls. More than 300,000 Black women have lost their jobs on Donald Trump's gold-plated watch.

Barriers are already shrinking the presence of Black students at some colleges and universities.

And congressional districts are being re-written in plain sight to erase seats held by Black and and Latino Democrats.

I could go on and on. Yet I won't. I still contend we've traveled far. I've seen it. Even Mississippi has seen it. (And not just on Saturdays in the fall.)

In 1961, James Meredith, a 28-year-old Air Force vet, was inspired to apply for admission to the University of Mississippi. Meredith was Black -- mixed-race, actually, including a bit of Choctaw, like me -- and, alas, Ole Miss still only accepted white students.

This was seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed segregation in public schools illegal in Brown v Board of Education.

Like other Southern states, Mississippi, of course, didn't give a darn. Meredith was twice denied entry before filing a federal suit, in conjunction with the state's NAACP.

On Sept. 13, 1962, a federal judge entered an injunction directing Ole Miss to admit and register Meredith.

Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett wasn't having it. "No school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your governor," he said. (Sound familiar, Alabama?)

A week later, on Sept. 20, Barnett physically blocked Meredith's entrance to Ole Miss as hundreds of white protesters jeered him on. Mississippi's own stand at the schoolhouse door. Four days later, a federal appeals court ordered Mississippi to admit Meredith or face contempt charges.

The following day -- on this date, Sept. 25 -- Barnett once again physically barred Meredith's admission in defiant contempt of the court. The governor was taken from the campus by U.S. Marshals. He and Lt. Gov. Paul Johnson were later found guilty of civil contempt, sentenced to jail and forced to pay a fine of $10,000 per day.

President John F. Kennedy later sent the Mississippi National Guard and federal agents to protect Meredith as he returned to campus. Alas, his return sparked a two-day riot that left two dead and hundreds of soldiers injured.

Finally, on Oct. 1, 1962. Meredith was able to register after almost 12,000 federal troops squashed the riot and accompanied him to campus.

On the first day of classes, Meredith was sartorially resplendent in a suit and tie. After he sat at a wooden desk, his classmates walked out, leaving him alone with the professor. In his dorm, students bounced a basketball in the room above his in the wee hours of the night. (Read more about it all here.)

In less than a year, Meredith graduated with a Political Science degree. Later, he earned a law degree from Columbia University and became a prominent civil rights activist and writer.

On June 6, 1966, Meredith was shot and wounded during a one-man 220-mile March Against Fear -- from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. He had invited Black men to join him to shed light on racial oppression in the Mississippi Delta, to encourage Blacks to register and vote and "to challenge the all-pervasive overriding fear" against violence. No one did.

Meredith suffered several wounds but survived.

Aubrey James Norvell, a white man, pleaded guilty to battery and assault with intent to kill and was sentenced to five years in prison.

In response to the shooting, leaders of several major civil rights organizations rallied 10,000 marchers and completed Meredith's march.

Mississippi has come far in these six-plus decades. As has much of the South.

Yet our nation still has so very, very far to go. Especially against White House headwinds seeking to wipe out our gains.