Black Student Views

American Progress towards Equality

By 1975, a lot of progress had been made in the way towards integration and equality inside of the United States. The United States strived to become more diverse and just for every person, achieving legal equality for every race by the nineteen-eighties. These achievements were only possible due to the people who fought for change, in positions of federal power, or at the grassroots level, campaigning for change through direct action. At MSU, this was most apparent though integration, when Richard Holmes was the first Black student to attend the school in 1965. Here, the article by Leon Adams, a black student at MSU, demonstrated the feelings of students about the 1960s and the leaders who inspired action to achieve equality and erase segregation from Mississippi State, seeing them as figures who could really make change and kill hatred by unity from the people.

Student Disagreements towards the Success of Integration

This article demonstrated the different views on segregation and the achievements of the 1960s. Micheal Shields, a student at Mississippi State University, held the opinion that the 1960s and leaders such as President Kennedy had achieved nothing relative to the destruction of integration and equality of all races in the United States. Here Shields demonstrates the differing opinions of students at Mississippi State University towards the accomplishments of the movements to integrate campuses and the United States as a whole. Shields shows how people disagreed on what more could be done in terms of equality, believing that meaningful change had not been accomplished, and that there was still work to do throughout the whole nation.

Student Views on President Kennedy

The Kennedy Assasination was an event that massively impacted the progress towards integration of the United States as well as campuses including Mississippi State University. When surveyed, students disagreed on the motives and explanation of President Kennedy's assassination, with most agreeing that some other group or organization conducted the assassination due to disagreements of Kennedy's policies and actions. With the consensus of students having believed that the assassination was political and wide reaching, it demonstrated that Mississippi State University's students felt on a wide range that Kennedy had made strides of progress towards equality in the United States, so much so that those opposed to his actions took him out.