Heat on Highway 51

Since his lonely ordeal in 1962 as the first Negro student at the University of Mississippi, frail, introverted James H. Meredith has felt a messianic call. In a recent book about his Ole Miss experiences, Meredith, now a Columbia University law student, maintains: "Whether it was true or not, I had always felt that I could stop a mob with the uplift of a hand. Because of my 'divine responsibility' to advance human civilization, I could not die."

Last week Meredith, 32, put his conviction to the test, though the effort seemed neither divinely inspired nor notably responsible. Striding out of Memphis along U.S. Highway 51, with a Bible in one hand and in the other an ivory-headed ebony cane that he had acquired during a 1964 trip to Africa, Meredith was bound for Jackson, Miss., 213 miles to the south. The announced purpose of the hike was to encourage Mississippi Negroes to register as voters, to challenge, as he put it, "the all-pervasive and overriding fear that dominates the day-to-day life of the Negro in the United States."

"Hit the Dirt!" Characteristically, Meredith had invited neither the companionship nor the moral support of civil rights Establishmentarians; only half a dozen personal friends were at his side. But by the time he got to De Soto County across the Mississippi-Tennessee border, there was a small entourage of newsmen, along with some 15 Mississippi state troopers, sheriff's deputies and FBI men.

Two miles beyond Hernando, Miss., Meredith was plodding doggedly up a small hill when a white man popped up from the brush along the highway. "Ja-ames Meredith! Ja-ames Meredith!" he cried. "I only want Ja-ames Meredith!" Meredith's companions scrambled for cover, stumbling over one another. "Look out, Jim, he's got a gun!" cried one. "Hit the dirt!" called an other. Startled, Meredith hesitated. A 16-gauge shotgun roared once, and a spray of bird shot blasted into Meredith's right side. He fell to his knees and began to wriggle across the highway. Twice more the gunman fired. One load missed; the other hit Meredith, who lay groaning: "Oh, my God, is anyone going to help me?"

Lawmen plunged into the woods after the gunman. Moments later they brought out Aubrey James Norvell, 40, a pipe-smoking, unemployed hardware salesman from Memphis. Ultimately, Norvell, with no known involvement in racial issues, was charged with assault with intent to commit murder.

Death Was Temporary. Meredith, blood oozing from some 70 pellet wounds in head and body, was whisked to Memphis in an ambulance. Because of a ludicrous series of gaffes by the Associated Press, millions of shocked Americans thought Meredith had been killed (see PRESS). As doctors at Memphis' William F. Bowld Hospital soon discovered, he was only suffering from "multiple superficial abrasions."

Nevertheless, anxious to attach themselves to any event that could further the cause, the entire hierarchy of Negro rights-movement leaders swooped down on Memphis--from Nobel Prizewinner Martin Luther King to the N.A.A.C.P.'s moderate Roy Wilkins and the Urban League's polished Whitney Young; from CORE's aggressive new National Director Floyd McKissick to S.N.C.C.'s black nationalist-inclined Chairman Stokely Carmichael. After a series of hurried sessions in Memphis, they all agreed that the shooting of Meredith must be dedicated to something--somehow.

They decided to continue en masse the march of Meredith the Loner--despite the victim's protests from his hospital bed: "I didn't want a crowd of people to go into rural Mississippi and become a burden upon the Negroes in the area; this is crop-planting time."

Blame Mississippi. Even Meredith's release from the hospital had overtones of injustice--according to the rights leaders. Said King: "There has been an attempt to put Mr. Meredith out of the hospital at a moment's notice." After a press conference in which he wept and had a fainting spell, Meredith flew to New York, told newsmen: "I will be armed when I return, unless I have assurance that arms are not needed. A handful of whites continue to kill Negroes. Negroes have no choice but to stop this slaughter."

By week's end only a smattering of people, mostly local Mississippi Negroes, had joined the snail's pace (averaging 9.7 miles a day) march. When one marcher collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack, Martin Luther King preached an instant sermon against Mississippi bigotry. "We must remember that this man, our brother, was born in Mississippi," said Dr. King. "His death meant, in a sense, that he was probably underfed and undernourished, overworked and underpaid."

Dr. King, who parade-marshaled last year's historic walk from Selma to Montgomery, predicted confidently that the new, enlarged Meredith marathon would surpass the Selma demonstration in impact. That prospect did not arouse universal cheer. Snapped Mississippi's N.A.A.C.P. Field Director Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in Jackson three years ago: "I don't want this to turn into another Selma, where everyone goes home with the cameramen and leaves us holding the bag. If they're here to help us, I'm all for them. But Mississippi has been exploited enough by the Negroes and whites who want to raise money and get publicity. I don't see how walking up and down a hot highway helps."

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