The March Against Fear: The Last Great Walk of the Civil Rights Movement and the Emergence of Black Power

In Mississippi in June 1966, an African-American man named James Meredith was shot and wounded in a roadside ambush a day after setting out to march through his home state to fight racism. Within twenty-four hours, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and other civil rights leaders had taken up Meredith's cause, determined to overcome this violent act and complete Meredith's walk. The stakes were high--there was no time for advance planning and their route cut through dangerous territory. No one knew if they would succeed. By many measures the March Against Fear became one of the greatest protests of the civil rights era.