Civil Rights activist James Meredith spoke at Fountain Street Church in 1967

Editor’s note: I have been working with Fountain Street Church and looking at a substantial amount of archival materials they have. Today’s post is only possible because Fountain Street Church has provided me access to their archives and they want this information to be public and available to the community. I will be hosting the archival material on the Grand Rapids People’s History Project site, but also posting here on GRIID. This is the second in a series of postings from the archival material at Fountain Street Church. 

Earlier this year I posted a transcript of a lecture from Kwame Ture, known as Stokely Carmichael when he spoke at Fountain Street Church in May of 1967, which you can read here.

Today, I want to post an audio file of a lecture that civil rights activist James Meredith gave in March of 1967 at Fountain Street Church.

James Meredith was known for being the first Black student to be admitted into the racially segregated University of Mississippi in 1962. Meredith decided to enroll in U Miss to pressure the Kennedy Administration into actually supporting desegregation policies in the South. A riot broke out in September of 1962, since the the University of Mississippi, white students and white alumni were opposed to desegregating the school.

In 1966, Meredith planned a solo 220-mile walk, which he called a March Against Fear. Meredith wanted to highlight continuing racism in the South and encourage voter registration after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On the second day of the march Meredith was shot at by white gunmen, and suffered several wounds. After recovering from the gunshot wounds Meredith started the march again and was joined by some 15,000 along the way. 

Here is the 56 minutes talk by James Meredith on March 8th, 1967.

Image used is in this post is from https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=8&psid=4186&filepath=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/primarysources_upload/images/Meredith_Enrolls_at_Ole_Miss_LG.jpg