Conspiracy theories that emerged from a civil rights shooting 60 years ago resonate today

On June 6, 1966, on a stretch of Highway 51 just south of Hernando, Mississippi, a portly, middle-aged white man named Aubrey Norvell stepped out of a gully, lifted his shotgun and fired three shots at James Meredith, a Black civil rights activist and Air Force veteran. Famous for integrating the University of Mississippi four years earlier, Meredith was on the second day of a walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, with the aims of registering voters and defying white intimidation. Bloodied by bird shot, Meredith again returned to the national spotlight. The shooting transformed his walk into a civil rights spectacle. Activists descended upon Mississippi for a three-week mass march. It featured titans of the movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., while inspiring Mississippians to march down country roads, volunteer their homes and food, and register at their local courthouses. During these protests, the civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael introduced “Black Power,” a slogan of self-determination that marked the next stage in the Black freedom struggle. It is a rich, intricate and evocative story – one that I tried to chronicle in my book, “Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear.”…

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