Searching for what is right 50 years later

 Everything was in order when Clyde Kennard decided to pursue a college degree at USM in the days when Southern Miss was known as Mississippi Southern College.

Kennard held a GED from Mendell Phillips High School in Chicago and was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, in which he served on active duty from 1945 to 1952. One thing prevented Kennard from matriculating to MSC.

Kennard was a black man.

To be precise, he was the first African-American to complete an MSC application.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Kennard's attempted integration, USM's Center for Black Studies held a symposium Tuesday.

Aubrey Lucus introduced the panel of speakers, which included Dorie Ladner, Joyce Ladner, John Frazier and Buford Posey.  Visitors asked questions about everything from the Civil Rights Movement to the election of President Obama, and learned about Kennard's story.

His story started with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of facilities based on the "separate, but equal" rule was unconstitutional.

Then, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was founded in reaction to that decision two years later, in 1956, according to files released to the public in 1998.

Those files also say the commission was organized to "protect the sovereignty of the State of Mississippi and her sister states" from federal government interference.

Some, like Joyce Ladner, a civil rights activist from the era, believe the commission was intended to prevent the integration that seemed inevitable after the historic decision.

The commission would come to play an important role in Kennard's search for an education.

According to a report by Zack V. Landingham of that commission, Kennard's first communication with Mississippi Southern College was a telephone call to request a class catalog in 1956, which he received soon after in the mail.

In this call to the registrar, Kennard did not mention he was black. When he called a second time to request an application, he noted his race.

He never received that application.

He came to the school to meet with the university president at the time, William McCain, to request the application. But he was informed that he needed five references from alumni in his community in order to complete the application process, a stipulation which he could not meet. In order to get this requirement waived, Kennard would have to submit a request to the university's board of trustees.

His application and request were both denied.

Kennard's next attempt to apply to MSC was in 1958, according to Landingham's report.

Again, however, Kennard's application was denied because he could not provide references.

He tried again in 1959 to gain a meeting with faculty members, and the university president, to have that requirement waived, but was unsuccessful.

At the same time, Kennard's attempts to enroll concerned some people at the university, including Chief Security Officer John Reiter. Reiter started a secret investigation into Kennard's history to find basis to deny his entry once and for all. He reported that he could find no defaming information on Kennard.

State officials offered to pay Kennard's expenses at any other state college where he could gain admission. Kennard refused because he wanted to care for the his family and poultry farm in Hattiesburg.

At one point, the officials even tried to start a junior college for blacks in the Hattiesburg area.

It would seem that persistence would be his ticket into the university, but Kennard's opponents would soon stanch his attempts.

Seeing they would not be able to buy him out of his thirst for higher education, his opponents turned to more dire resorts.

In 1960, Kennard was convicted of paying Johnny Lee Roberts to steal $25 worth of chicken feed, a crime which was later admitted false by Roberts, according to an article by New York Times writer Adam Liptak published in May 2006.

The sentence for this crime was to be seven years, one for each $3.57 worth of stolen feed.

Kennard was released in January 1963, but his health had deteriorated during his prison time from overwork, poor treatment, and suspected colon cancer.

So much so that he died in June that same year.

Clyde Kennard's life may have ended that year, but his fight was far from over. Many discovered the injustice that had befallen Kennard, but redeeming  his good name wouldn't be easy.

USM's Registrar's Office and financial aid department are now housed in Kennard-Washington Hall. The building is named in honor of him and Walter Washington, the first black to receive a doctorate from the university or anywhere in Mississippi.

Aubrey Lucas, registrar of Mississippi Southern College at the time Kennard tried to apply, said that the renaming of this building was a confession from the university.

Aside from the renaming of the building, there were no other well-documented attempts to honor Kennard, or even to restore his good name until very recently.

This changed when Mona Ghadiri, a student at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, helped to organize a group of students, including Agnes Mazur and Callie McCune, who fought for Kennard's pardon.

Governor Haley Barbour opposed the pardon, citing the fact that he had never pardoned anyone before, according to Liptak's article.

"The governor hasn't pardoned anyone, be it alive or deceased," Barbour's spokesperson was quoted in the article. "The governor isn't going to issue a pardon here."