The Second Mississippi Plan was devised by the Mississippi legislature to avoid honoring the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments without attracting federal intervention. The plan included a residency length requirement, poll tax, literacy test, and clean criminal record requirement. The Second Mississippi Plan successfully disfranchised most African Americans in that state.
Black veteran James Meredith arrived to begin classes at the University of Mississippi. Thousands of whites rioted, resulting in two deaths and 160 injuries. US troops were sent in to suppress the violence. Despite threats on his life, Meredith graduated in 1963. He had originally been rejected from the university because of his race.
Emmett Till, an African American teenager from Chicago, was murdered in Mississippi. Having arrived in Mississippi a week before to visit relatives, Till was kidnapped, beaten, shot, and killed by two white men after allegedly speaking inappropriately to a white female grocery store cashier. The murderers—the husband and half brother-in-law of the cashier—dumped Till’s corpse in a river. The men were soon arrested but were aqcuitted at trial by an all-white, all-male jury.