Oral History Interview with Kenneth Mayfield Parchman Oral ...

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Kenneth Mayfield— University of Mississippi 1

Oral History Interview with Kenneth Mayfield

Parchman Oral History Project

Interview conducted by Jasmine Stansberry on June 11, 2019

at Mayfield Law in Tupelo, Mississippi.

[Background discussion as Andy Harper sets up recording equipment]

[Interview Begins]

Jasmine Stansberry (JS) [0:00:45- 00:54]: Today is Tuesday June 11, 2019, and I am Jasmine

Stansberry, a student at the University of Mississippi. And I'm with Kenneth Mayfield, and we

are here at the Mayfield law firm in Tupelo, Mississippi. This oral history interview is for the

Parchman oral history project. Now, if you will please introduce yourself giving your full name

birthday and where you were born.

Kenneth Mayfield (KM) [0:01:11- 0:01:28]: And I'm Kenneth Mayfield. My address is post

office box nine, Tupelo Mississippi. I was born in Okolona, Mississippi. Did you ask for my

birth date as well? Did you ask that?

JS [01:29]: Yes sir. I did.

KM [1:30]: May 29, 1951.

JS [1:32-1:34]: Can you tell me about your upbringing?

KM [1:35-1:57]: Yeah, I was born outside of Okolona, Mississippi, on a farm. My father and

mother was sharecroppers. We were reared basically on my grandfather's property most of my

upbringing, but we had some period of time where we lived on a white land-owners land and

shared the crop with them.

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JS [2:01-2:17]: And, so, what was it like, your experience seeing your parents and your family,

you know, work the land as sharecroppers? How did that impact some of your ideas about race?

KM [02:18- 04:11]: Well, first of all, the work ethic that I developed was at a young age. Now,

in those days of course we worked from the time we were able to work, pretty much, we worked

from more or less five or six years old. By the time I was a teenager, I mean, we were working

like men at that point. I have four brothers and one sister, and my father was a farmer in the early

days, and farming apparently didn't go too well. So he moved to, up north, eventually, to Gary,

Indiana, and worked on the railroad. My mother stayed at home with us, and we traveled North a

couple of times. We lived up in Racine, Wisconsin, and then later went to Gary, Indiana. But the

cost of living as I understand it, was a little more expensive up there and it was down south, so

we eventually— they decided to come back home, and my father tried to farm again. It didn't

work out for him and he eventually went to Gary, Indiana. And he was living in Gary, Indiana,

and when he was killed in an automobile accident when I was nine years old. He was coming

back from Gary, Indiana. As a matter of fact, he was coming home for the Christmas holidays at

the time that he skid off the highway in January, on January 8th of 1961. And at that point he

entered death, as I understand it. I was nine years old. My oldest brother was eleven. I have a

younger sister who's a year and a half younger than I am, and it went on down from there to the

age of eight months. My youngest brother was eight months old.

JS [04:12- 04:15]: So you spent your teenage years in the South?

KM [04:15- 05:54]: Yes, yes. Except for, we may have spent a total of one year up North. Some

of my younger brothers spent a little more time up north, and my oldest brother and I stayed with

my grandparents outside of Okolona, and so we spent a good year— as a matter of fact, my first

school year we were staying more or less with my grandfather and grandmother when we started

the first little school I went to, which was an interesting story by itself. It was a little wooden,

country school that had one room to it and benches. Like, if you've ever been to an old church

that had like wooden floors and wooden benches and that was the school we went to. And I went

there for six months. And interestingly enough, that was a period of time after Brown versus

Board of Education which was 1954, and the South was trying to work around Brown versus the

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Board of Education, so they decided to start building schools. So many schools were built for

African Americans back in the late [19]50s after Brown versus Board of Education. The state of

Mississippi was determined to create equal schools, if you will, without having to integrate. And

basically Brown versus Board of Education had determined that separate by itself was going to

be a problem, and it was going to be a problem being equal with equal education given the

historical background that we had here in the South.

JS [05:55]: So a year after Brown, Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi.

KM [06:02]: Yes.

JS [06:03-06:06]: How did that impact you when you heard about that? If you will?

KM [06:07-09:33]: Yeah, yeah. I was four years old when Emmett Till was murdered. And that

word circulated very quickly in our community. My mother, who at that point was raising us

here in Mississippi— and my father was working on the railroad by that time— by the time

Emmett Till got killed. And it really controlled how you acted, what you did. My mother was a

conformist and certainly didn't want to cause any problems. And so she taught us to be obedient

and to more or less, be a little bit afraid of white people, is kind of my upbringing, I would say,

as a young young boy coming up. And I was obedient. I was a pretty obedient child, I guess you

would say so we understood the norms and mores at the time and understood what to do and

what not to do. As we came up, when we went to school, went to— excuse me, when we went to

town— for example, to shop, it was customary and you knew where to which counter to go to.

We had counties set up— five and ten cent stores in Okolona, and there was one counter that

was set aside exclusively for whites and one counter was set aside for African American, and so

you'd learn the right counter to go, so. And I learned which count it was that we have to go to is

African Americans, and would go to the right counter. Stay with the norm, you know. Don't rock

the boat, was my mother's clear philosophy. But we also learned that if a white came to the

counter, even though you got there first, you'd have to relinquish your position and let them

come up first. You learn things like, if you even though you see some of the white children

playing with toys, it was not permitted for the black children to play with toys in the store, you

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know, unless you were gonna buy it. You have to buy it and then you play with it. But we

learned the norms. You learn to to say yes sir to children that were your age. If that's the boss's

son, you say yes sir as a matter of respect to them. We learned things like when you are

talking— a black man for example, we learned that it was improper, and impolite if you will, to

look directly at a white person in the eyes when you were talking to him. It was better to be

humble and kind of look downwards so that it signifies that you were respecting and certainly no

threat to that individual, but it was always yes sir and no sir, yes ma'am and no ma'am, and that

was the way things were done then.

JS [09:34- 09:45]: How did you feel when you heard about James Meredith integrating the

University of Mississippi in 1962? What were your thoughts and feelings about that?

MK [09:46-12:58]: Man, it was kind of scary. It was kind of scary realizing what had happened.

By the time we heard about it— by the time I heard about it— some people had gotten killed.

And it was like, you know, perhaps he never should have gone up there. Perhaps he should have

stayed in his place, was my thinking at that time as a young boy coming up. Why would he go up

there? It's almost like asking me why would I go to the white school? I mean, I know my place,

and so I stay in my rightful place. So I didn't really understand why he would desire, or why

everyone would desire, to go somewhere where he was not wanted and not welcome. So it was

just a confusing time to me, and during this era, of course Dr. King, by then is well known, and

he's going to different places and disturbing the peace, if you will. Civil rights workers started

coming through Okolona early in the civil rights movement. Actually, the early [19]60s. We had

a very active civil rights leader that lived in Okolona named Dr. Howard Gunn. And so Okolona

was a nice little hotbed where civil rights workers came there before they went to many of the

small, the smaller cities. And they would they would come in, and we'd hear about this— that

they would go to the theater, to the movie theater. And blacks were not allowed downstairs. They

would sit in the balcony. And so the civil rights workers came into Okolona. And we were told

they were brave enough to go upstairs— I mean to go— the civil rights workers, they were

whites and blacks. And the whites would go upstairs— which they could do so if they wanted to

do, the whites could go upstairs, but the blacks could not go downstairs— and so we heard they

went into the theater and went downstairs. Man. We heard that they went to a restaurant. It was

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called Moore’s Steakhouse at the time. And it was known that blacks wouldn't dare go to

Moore’s Steakhouse. It was a sit-down restaurant at the time. And they went into Moore’s

Steakhouse. So all of these things that we are hearing about during the early days of the civil

rights movement that the James Meredith is integrating Ole Miss, that civil rights workers are

coming to town, bus loads of people going down to Jackson, and all of this is in the aftermath of

Emmett Till's murder, and we're sitting out six miles out from Okolona scared that some whites

may come to our house. You know, some KKK, the Klansmen, were very much alive and well in

our area at the time. And they were putting out signs and they were painting on bridges you

know, KKK. And so it was a nice little fear factor for me I'd say as a young child and a teenager

growing up.

JS [12:59-13:05]: So what made you decide that the University of Mississippi would be the

school that you would attend?

KM [13:06-18:55]: That's an interesting question and we'd have to fast-forward a little bit. By

the time I got to be a junior in high school, we got introduced to freedom of choice. Freedom of

choice was a volunteer program that was offered to the the schools at that time, apparently, to try

to comply with Brown versus Board of Education. So during my junior year, I remember being

asked which school do I want to go to? Do I want to go back to my black school or do I want to

go to the white school? [Laughter] And to me, it was a pretty simple answer. You stay where you

are. And my oldest brother, who was a little more nonconformist than I was, decided that he

wanted to integrate the school, so he and some of his buddies decided they were going to sign up

to go to the white school. And I thought, this is kind of interesting, so since my oldest brother is

doing it, I think I'd like to go, too. It seemed like we could get a better education. Seemed like

there would be a better future for us. And perhaps— this is a few years after Jane Meredith.

We're talking about [19]66, by the year of [19]66. And James Meredith is very much on our

minds. Emmett Till is still on your mind. But we are becoming a little older as teenagers, and my

father had been killed, so my mother is raising all of these boys, you know. And we want to be a

little nonconformist, I guess. So anyway, I want to follow my brother. And so both of us signed

up to go to the white school during my junior year. It was actually his senior year. And we had to

turn the paperwork into our school principal. And we turned the paperwork into the school

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principal. School principal gets in contact with my mother and lets her know what's going on

because if you were sixteen, you could kind of sign up on your own. So the principal kind of

calls us in with mother, and my mother calls us in and says, “You don't know. That's gonna be a

mighty dangerous thing. We live out there in the country KKK is very much alive. You see the

signs around. You know, it hadn't been that long ago that Emmett Till got killed, you know.” So

anyway, she talked to us like a mother is supposed to talk to her children. And she said, “I

appreciate if y'all didn't didn't go.” And again, I'm more the conformist, so I said well, it's up to

her, but, you know, I said I'm willing to to go you know, stay at the school. So she persuaded

him to spend his last year at Fannie Carter High School, which was a black high school, and so I

stayed there as well. But something happened during that period of time that tended to make us

feel that we could make it— we could be more successful in the world— if we went to the white

school. So Ole Miss was like Harvard to me when I was coming up. It was like Ole Miss, I

thought it was in the league with Harvard. I mean, that's just the way I felt. I said, and man, I had

decided when I was a teenager that I wanted to become a lawyer. And it was like, man, if you're

gonna make success in this world you got to be a doctor or a lawyer. I mean, that's just the way it

is, and I'm shooting for the top. And somebody told me I was a pretty good student, and I could

learn pretty well so hey, go for the top. And I was thinking about either a doctor or a lawyer and

I'm watching TV one day, and I see the doctors and all this white uniform, and I even saw him

with white shoes. I mean, I don't know why but that turned me off. I see that I see the lawyers.

The lawyers will dressed up in a nice suit and shiny shoes, you know, so I seem like I want to be

a lawyer. So I had to determined at an early age that I wanted to become a lawyer and, of course,

get rich. And so Ole Miss was the place to make that happen. My oldest brother had gone to a

Jackson State after he'd finished high school. He finished one year ahead of me. And I came

along and decided man I'm gonna I'm gonna make history I'm gonna go to Ole Miss. Nobody

from Okolona had gone to Ole Miss. You know, we heard about James Meredith, and of course,

most people were afraid to go to Ole Miss. So I think I’ll go. So I sent, got an application, got my

paperwork together, and filled it out. And later, I told my mother after I had gotten accepted to

Ole Miss. And she tried her best to dissuade me from going to Ole Miss. She said, “I mean why

don't you do like your oldest brother and go to Jackson State? Things are still dangerous. These

are dangerous times.” As a matter of fact, see, the year that I enrolled in Ole Miss, Dr. King was

assassinated. He was assassinated April 4th of 1968. I graduated in May of that year, so Robert

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Kennedy was assassinated some a couple of months later. I mean, it was a terrible— some

difficult days, you might say. And I look back on it thinking about my mother and what she had

kind of had to go through. But anyway, my mind was set. I'm going to Ole Miss. If they let me

in, I'm going to Ole Miss. And so I was accepted at Ole Miss and decided to go.

JS [18:55- 19:07]: Can you tell me— because I’ve read somewhere that you identified as a

militant black.

KM [19:08- 21:24]: Now that was later. That was later. When I enrolled in Ole Miss, my goal

had nothing to do with militancy. Mine was to be a conformist. I mean, I want to get into school.

I want to be a successful lawyer. I feel like I was in the best school ever make that happen, so I

went in focused. I didn't play. I did— try not to make friends. I just want to study. Learn all that I

can. And I knew I was starting behind the eight ball, if you will. I knew that the education that I

had gotten was perhaps not as good as some of my counterparts. I was told that by my teachers

that my English was very weak and that I was encouraged to follow my mother's advice then to

go to Jackson State or to Tougaloo, perhaps, but not go to Ole Miss because our schools hadn't

really prepared us for that, and so I felt like no matter. I can study hard. I was a hard worker. I

mean I could pick cotton. I could haul hay. I could work like a man, so I said I can study and I

can catch up. So I went in there focused on studying, eight, ten hours a day whatever I needed to

just to catch up and make it and just to be able to make some fair grades is what I was feeling

like I gotta do. And so I was not militant. I was— I bought the Ole Miss— I had to Ole Miss

rebel notebook with the old rebel on it. When I went home, I was proud to walk around with the

notebook in my hand. The rebel flag meant nothing negative to me. It was a red, white, and blue

flag that I was, had not been taught to hate. And I didn't hate it at the time, when I finished high

school. Didn't really understand what it stood for. Something we were just not taught that much

in school. So that was my focus when I went there. Now, somewhere in the process of being a

student at Ole Miss is where I got introduced to militancy. And where I was, if you might say

radicalized, was would have been there at Ole Miss.

JS [21:24-21:29]: Can you tell me about your experience with becoming radicalized at Ole

Miss?

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KM [21:29- 39:13]: Well, after about my first semester, I got out of the shell that I was in. I told

ya, I studied eight, ten hours a day in the beginning, but that didn't last long. [Laughter] By my

second semester, I started being a lot more social and trying to have some fun, you know,

enjoying the college life. So I made a lot of friends. And it must have been about I guess fifty or

sixty blacks on campus at that time, and so I got a chance to meet everybody. I mean, if you

allowed yourself to get out of your dorm room, which I finally did, and then I got a chance to

meet everybody and we got close and I felt like eventually, if I got out of that room and got to

socializing, I would take it to the extreme because that's just what I do. And so, we started having

fun, partying and stuff like that. And one person in particular influenced me, and this was during

my second year. And it was a student named John Donald who had been in the military. He had

served two years in the army and enrolled in law school. And so he came to one of the meetings

that we had. We had been holding black student union meetings, but they will fairly

conformance. I mean, you know, nobody was getting out of line. We put some demands on the

university and told the university to— that they needed to allow blacks to play football, play

basketball, we needed some black professors. I think was about ten demands that we had, but

they all were considered very weak and mild demands, if you will, by today's standards. But so

we we’re kind of working with that trying to work within the system and a leader at that time

was definitely a conformist, if you, will but anyway John Donald came along and had been in the

military. And John started coming to the meetings, and before you knew it, he was, he took over

the leadership role and he was advocating doing more militant things and boy, that sounded great

to my young ears, you know. And so a few of us buddies said, “Man, John's the way to go. He's

the way to go. Let's follow John.” So John started organizing protests on campus. I remember

one of the first one that he introduced us to was go to the cafeteria. He said, “Let's go to the

cafeteria.” The cafeteria was opening I think around 4:20 at that time for dinner, and he said,

“Let's be over there when they open the cafeteria.” He said, “I got an idea.” He said, “We'll take

over the cafeteria.” We said, “Okay, how do you take over a cafeteria? You got 40 or 50 of us. I

mean, how can we do that?” He said, “I've counted the tables. And he said, “there's enough of us

that we can each take a table.” And he said, “if we take a table, then the whites are not gonna sit

down. They not gonna sit down at the table with you.” So sure enough, we lined up outside the

cafeteria around 4:15, 4:20, and as soon as they opened, boy, we rolled in, you know, all forty

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some of us. And we did exactly what John said. We went in. Everybody got a table, and boy, it

was just kind of interesting when you look around and see the faces of the whites as they walked

in the room. And they walk in, and they’re looking for a place to sit down, but there's no place to

sit unless they sit down with one of us. And nobody wants to do that, so they actually ended up

standing up. And the cafeteria, which you know, I think this is William Winter Institute, which is

there on Barr Hal,. which is right across from the old cafeteria. And so, at that time, they

normally open up one half of the cafeteria on weekdays and on Sunday, they opened another

section. And after we went in and took over the cafeteria that day, we thought we had it made.

And finally they went over and just took the ropes down and opened up the other half of the

cafeteria so all the whites came in and just simply went to the left of the area that's normally

reserved for Sundays. But we felt like, hey, we're making an impact. We're being heard. Our

leader said let's go to let's go to the security office. I mean, he think of these different things, you

know, to do. “Let's go to the Security office.” and we said, “What we're gonna do there, John?”

He said, “We're gonna file complaints.” “Complaints for what?” He said, “Racism.” And so we

went down to the security office and asked them for forms. And they said, “What do you want

forms for?” We said, “We got some complaints.” They said, “Which complaint?” “Racism!”

And we've get the forms. I mean, everybody get forms. We would just write racism in big bold

letters on it, and so it's just going from one degree to another as we, John would think of different

ideas and finally other people come up with different ideas of things that we can do to bring

attention to the discrimination that was taking place at Ole Miss at that time. This is a period of

time when I say that I became a little radicalized. One of the things that happened is that we went

to a football game and again, keep in mind, blacks didn't, we're not allowed to play football at the

time. There were no blacks on the football team. But we had heard that Ole Miss was playing a

school out of Texas, I don't remember exact name, but it was a school out of Texas and they say

they had a black running back. I never played football. I really didn't even know the game. We

didn't have a football team at my high school. So they said, let's go to the game. And it sound

like a great idea, you know, let's go. So we went to the game so that we could cheer on this black

running back from Texas. And so we took us a seat somewhere among the bleachers on Ole

Miss’s side. This was not too well thought out, so we're sitting in the benches and boy, this

young black running back caught the ball. And you imagine the thrill that we got when he took

off down that line and he had the ball and he was running. And went from I mean, from one end

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of the goal to the next. And boy, we were cheering and hollering, I mean, we were motivated.

And I mean, cans and cups and sticks and everything start coming out of the bleachers down on

us. It was just a handful of us down here on Ole Miss side, but this was not well thought out, was

it? No, not at all. So forth. I mean, it got very dangerous in that, so we picked up and left out of

that game that day. But nobody got seriously injured. It was just some knocks and bruises, but

that type thing that type of reaction that we got, it tended to cause you to get more and more

radical in your thinking, you know. And so finally, what happened, students at Kent State —of

course this is during the anti-war movement. Students at Kent State, I think, it was four students

up there that got killed for protesting and marching at Kent State in Ohio. Well, later, two

students got killed at Jackson State. And we’re up at Ole Miss. And so, boy, we hear about all of

this. My brother was at Jackson State at the time. And so we're just getting more and more angry,

if you will. Proper terminology, I guess, would be radicalized, but we were mad. We were just

angry. We got to do something. We got to do something. And so finally, we went over to the

Chancellor's house and demanded to speak to him. I mean, at night. Like about nine, ten o'clock

at night, you know. Chancellor was living on campus. We go over to his house. And we bam

bam bam bam bam bam on the doors. You open up, you’re gonna talk to us. We're gonna change

some things around here. Boy, I remember standing on the porch at the Chancellor's house, and

we would just stand out there then just talking, you know, I mean it was about forty or fifty of us,

I guess. And finally, to our surprise, the Chancellor, who Porter Fortune at that time, opened the

door. And Porter Fortune’s, the Chancellor’s porch and smoked a cigar. And he walked out— he

opened the door and took a puff out of that cigar, and I still can remember this, he was so calm

and collected and he puffed and he said, “What can I do for you all?” Just as calm. And we said,

“Boy, we went after him. You know, not physically, but just saying, “I tell you what you can do,

you can change this racist attitude that we have up here. We need black, black—” and which, I

tell him what all we wanted, he said, “well, they take that under consideration, and it takes time.”

We said, “Well, time is up. It's time for us to do something now.” And so, one of the guys he was

a freshman. He came as a freshman under me, and I remember— I won't call even recall his

name— but I remember this guy saying that, “You know, what Chancellor,” he said, “I will slap

your face.” And I'm thinking now, I was pretty bold, but not that bold. And I remember no, I

don't think that's a great idea, you know what I mean? But he said, “I will— you hear me? I will

slap your face,” And so, the chancellor took a draw at the cigar. He said, “I don't think that'd be a

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good idea.” We couldn’t believe how calm he was and we knew this guy, I almost called his

name, it starts with an R. But I almost— we knew this guy was a little you know he was more

radical than we were, okay? And we said, “Man, he'll do it. I mean, you know, he will do this.

Hey, we gotta stop him. So we started— we grabbed him. I mean, we physically grabbed him

and said, “No, no, no.” Chancellor looked at him and he said, “Y'all don't have to hold him.” But

at that time, we figured, what is going on? And somebody pointed out our backs was turned to, it

was the old law school building. It was— our back was turned to the building. We didn't know

that the Highway Patrol had been called in. Now, we had been on the rampage that that night.

And this was about the fourth, fifth night, I guess, that we had kind of been doing different things

than I mentioned to you, from cafeteria security stuff, and somebody pointed out, they said,

“Look behind you. On the third floor.” And the Highway Patrol was sitting there. I guess they

had the sharpshooters that was sitting there with the rifles pointed at us. I suppose, just waiting.

Waiting on any of us, you know. So I knew, we knew it took the chancellor a long time to come

out, but we really just thought he was just ignoring us, you know. And he came out of there, but

by the time he came out, they were aiming. So we looked forward, that was a sobering moment

to realize how close we were to being massacred right there that day. So we backed off, you

know, once we looked up and saw what we were up against. And everybody kind of got scared

and I guess just kind of backed off. But all of this was kind of causing us to be angrier if you

will. So eventually, we were having our meetings. We'd have a meeting twice sometimes two,

three times a week, and some other things happen, but I’ll move to the climax. One night, we

were holding one of our meetings at the Black Student Union, and we heard that a group called

Up With People was performing at Fulton Chapel. And I had never heard of Up with People. I

knew nothing about them, but somebody in the group knew that it was a peace group. I mean, it

was an international singing group that went around preaching harmony among all people. And

so we said, “Well, we need to go talk to them because we got a message for them.” And so we

decided to go to this performance at Fulton Chapel. And when we walked to the door, we didn't

know that it was a cover charge. And it was like, I want to say, it was two dollars. I believe it

was a two dollar cover charge. And, so we went in there, and we said, “What are we gonna do?”

And the guy that was leading us at the time he said, “We've already paid our dues.” He says,

“Step aside. We're going in.” So we went into Fulton Chapel without paying the two dollars, and

we marched down. I think it was two hours, I believe, we marched down the aisles of Fulton

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Chapel. And we had a chant at that time. And the chant was, “What you gonna do?” And the

response was, “Do it to ‘em.” “What you gonna do?” “Do it to ‘em!” “What you gonna do?” So

we chant all the way down through Fulton Chapel, and I was somewhere in the group. I was

really not leading the group, but I was certainly a loyal follower. And so, as the leaders went up

on stage, so did the rest of us. And we got up on stage, and the cameras were flashing. We had

heard that The Commercial Appeal and some of the news media will be there because it's an

international singing group, and so we got up on stage, and boy, they were singing. And

somebody told me that the song they were singing was What Color is God's Skin? They started

singing that song in respect to us when we came in. And so, they were our friends, you know,

that was singing, but we just want to get our message out. And so we said they were singing a

song. We started getting the mic, and who knows what we said on the mics but they, in Fulton

Chapel, they actually control the mics in the background somewhere. In other words, as we

would grab a mic and start talking on it, you realize after a period of time, it went silent on you.

And so you had to throw that mic down and grab another one. And this went on for maybe

twenty minutes, I would say, perhaps, and after about twenty minutes of being on stage, and in

causing a bit of a disturbance there on the stage, we heard that the Highway Patrol had

surrounded the building. And so we said, “What we're gonna do? Go out, take our message out.

This is what we want to do. We got to get our message out. And so we were emboldened. We

were not really not afraid of the Highway Patrol at that point. We had to bristle up pretty good,

and so we went outside sure enough, they had surrounded the building. I guess, I would say a

hundred, it seemed like it was about a hundred or so of Patrol. And so we walked out, and they

had us encircled. And so this guy from Pontotoc, Mississippi, and I'll never forget it. He stood

up, and he’s a real big guy, too, he said my name is Chief Stringer. He said, “I’m with the

Mississippi Highway Patrol.” He said, “All of you all are under arrest.” He said, “We're gonna

take you to jail. We're gonna take some of you to Oxford Lafayette County Jail, and the rest of

you we're gonna take down to Parchman. And so we said, “Well, let's go, let's go. I'm in right.

I’m in the right.” and so they load us in four to the back seat of a car, power pack four of us to

each one of those cars and loadeds us all up down to to the county jail. And from the county jail,

once it got full, then the rest of them they took down Parchman. And so I was one of the lucky

ones. I got a chance to stay in the Lafayette County jail house. So we stayed in there that that

night. It was was a weekday night. And finally, one of the local leaders heard about that we had

Edited


gotten arrested and all. He started making arrangements with different community people to get

us out of jail. Most of us were not in a position to call home, you know, and ask parents to try to

bail us out, so we just sat it out. I think we had one or two that may have been able to make

phone calls and get to response. The rest of us stayed there until the community people actually

got us out of jail. We stayed in there that night, and I want to say by late the next night they had

gotten us out. At least on bond.

JS [39:12- 39:19]: Did any of your friends— did you know anyone was taken to Parchman?

And if so, did they say anything about that?

JM [39:20-]: Yeah I did. Yeah, one of my one of my buddies I know was taking to Parchman. In

fact he years later, I want to say possibly six or seven years ago, because he called me up and he

said he want to get a reunion together [Laughter] of all the ones who went to Parchman at that

time. But it was, I would say Parchman was treated about the same as we were treated there and

that Lafayette County Jail. It was it was pretty awful, but after a period of time, you just you

knew, I mean you knew the food it really felt— it smelt like slop is what it, so who knows what

was in it, but after we stayed there so long we just started eating it. It was like, I knew my mother

fixed rice on a daily basis, and I was used to rice. I know what rice supposed to taste like. And

this tastes like dishwater or something, and boy, it was just sitting there, but we had gotten so

hungry, you know. We just it was shoot, man. I got to eat something, you know. I remember one

of my buddies, when we finished eating I said, “Well, it is what it is.” And I just ate , and he ate

it and he was hungry just like the rest of us and he ate it. And when he finished, he threw the pan

down. He said, “Man, this tastes like slop.” He said, “You just now figured that out?” [Door

chimes]

Andy Harper (AH) [40:50-40:56]: Do you mind saying that again? I hate to lose that because of

the beep. I hate to ask someone to repeat something, but tell what it tasted like again?

MK [40:56-44:24]: He said, it tastes like slop. And those of our own farm, that lived on the farm,

you slop the hogs. And you take your old dishwater and you could put in in a bucket and take the

old food that you,throw away food, you throw it all in a bucket. We called it a slop bucket, and

Edited


you literally would take this and go feed it to your hogs and it had leftovers that we had in those

days was fed to the hogs as a meal and of course, we raised our own hogs, and once a year, you

slaughter them. But anyway, he said, it tastes like slop and threw his pan down and everybody

started teasing him telling, “Man, you knew that when you— we could have told you that.”

[Laughter] But anyway, that— was those type events just really shaped us. And after that going

to jail it was like, man, it's just all over now. I mean, it's just to us, it was just like some people

had gone to war and lost their lives there. Students had lost their lives up at Kent State

University. Students got lost their lives at Jackson State University, and I don't know if you

heard about that, where the patrol went in there, and they just opened fire on the dormitories, you

know. And boy, it was just like the world is coming to an end, and so that dream that I had to

becoming a lawyer has just got to be put on the back burner. And this this cause is greater than I

am. And so we were willing to actually sacrifice our lives for the movement during that time. So

whenever they made a decision, it was sixty some of us got arrested in all. It was actually about

forty some of us got arrested, and after we got arrested and taken to jail, then others on campus

who were not in Fulton Chapel heard about and it decided to have a meeting. And they had a

meeting, and they got arrested. And they had never even gone into Fulton Chapel. So all of us

got our letters by the time we got out of jail. They had already notified all of us, hey, you know,

your hearing’s coming up. You’re suspended. You know, we're kicked out of school. And so we

were ready to go tell our story. I mean, tell our story. Maybe we make national news and

accomplish some of our goals. Again, schooling it was like secondary. It was taking a secondary

role. I hadn't been to class in weeks, you know and have decided, well, this is just a way it’s

supposed to end for me. It just it is what it is, and so when we went to the chancellor hearing, I

think with the student council. The way they had it set up, you go to the student council and, of

course, they decided to kick us out. We appealed to the Chancellor, and he decided to uphold

their decisions and kick us out. So we had some lawyers came in from legal services, and they

represented us and decided to put it in federal court. So it went to federal court, and the federal

judge decided to uphold the suspension, so we were kicked out for a two year, two year period of

time. [Door chimes]

AH [44:25]: Can we do that section again? Starting with, who defended you? And kind of go

forward.

Edited


KM [44:31- 46:58]: That was that was a North Mississippi Rural Legal Services. A young

lawyer you came down from Connecticut named John Britton, and John Britton is the same

individual that I saw his picture here a few minutes ago. But John Britton, you see is gray-headed

now, but he was a young lawyer who came in and defended us before the university and also in

federal court. So as a result of the hearings, eight— they decided to pick eight students by the

time we made the federal court. The question was, since it was forty-something in the original

group, why did you put eight out? Did they do something different? And the answer was from

the University was that eight of us were leaders. Now, I really was not a leader. I mean, I was a

good follower, but I was really not the leader. We found out that what they did was, they

identified— they found the ones they had good photographs on. And they had a good photograph

of me and at least seven more and because I knew it was— now, I was pretty active. Don’t

misunderstand me. I'm not trying to downplay. I had become pretty radicalized, but I was not

holding the leadership position, you know. I was just a young fellow who was just out there. This

soldier, if you will, but there were two individuals that were included in that eight, and they were

just not involved at all. They just happened to be caught up in the moment, so but they had good

pictures of them. So what happened was, they pretended like we were good leaders, but it was

really had more evidence on us and they had on the others and they would go through the

annuals and try to pick your pictures out and try to identify who was involved. And they they had

clear identity on eight of us, and those eight of us that they decide to put out, put everybody else

on probation, including the ones who came in after the fact who will not even didn't even go to

Fulton Chapel. Every one of them went on probation.

JS [46:59- 47:00]: How did you feel when you were kicked out of the University of Mississippi?

KM [47:01-56:15]: I felt like I was in war. I really feel like it was a war. Like a soldier, if you

will, who maybe had lost a battle, but the war was still ours to be won. We could still win, and so

I just held on to that some kind of way. I kept waiting for a miracle. Something is going to

happen and and this is not for real. And finally, I had kind of come to the conclusion, well,

maybe this is the way it’s supposed to end, I don't know. I stopped going to class, and the

incident was February 25th of 1970. And so we have a period of time in there when most of us

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didn't go to class like we were supposed to, but as it got close to the exam time, I remember a

good friend of mine. I tried to dissuade him from going to class, and he said “No, I'm gonna keep

going to class.” And I said, “But what's the use of it? I mean you're not gonna get credit for it.

They've already put us out. It's on appeal.” He said, “But I'm going to class.” And he was my

best buddy, and I just couldn't stand to see him go to class and I didn't go for fear that he might

be right and I'd be left behind, so I started going back to class. I actually started going back to

class about a month before the semester was over, and I was I was a pretty good student there, I

mean ,when I was focused on studying. And so I went back to class and took all of my exams.

We were on a temporary court order, and so the judge allowed us to take our exams. I took the

exam, and was actually an honor student that that semester. I was taking twenty one hours, most

of them were political science and sociology. No very difficult courses, and so when we went to

court, February 25th— not February, June 25th of 1970, we had our final hearing before the

judge. And when the lawyer that was representing the university said, “Well judge, he said the

question some of them were asking is will they get credit for this semester?” because we had

actually finished the semester by June 25th, and so the lawyer for the University said that they

shouldn't. They were suspended in February for the February incident, and I think we were

suspended on like March 16 and so it's retroactive and he starts citing the case law and this and

that and the judge looked at him, and the judge said, “If these folks finished up those courses,”

he said, “I'm giving them credit for it.” And that was twenty one hours I had. Now, I was so mad

and angry at the time that I really didn't have a good appreciation for what the judge had done. I

look back on it now and said well the judge really did me well didn't, he? But at the time, I was

interview I was called by somebody with The Commercial Appeal after the decision came down,

when he said eight of us were suspended from the University. And I remember some reporter

asked me a question, said, “What do you think of the judge's ruling?” Now, there'll be a

newspaper on file somewhere in The Commercial Appeal back around that June 25th of 1970, I

would say it was on 26, and it went something like this: they spoke to Donald Cole— the same

Donald Cole who's at the university, was just retired from the university. They spoke to him and

he was cool even at that time. They asked him what did he think he said, “Well, I don't think the

judge used proper rationale. I think he didn't give it full consideration,” all those intelligent

things that you'd expect one to say. And we were in the same room when the phone call came in

for a fire coming, our reaction, and he handed the phone to me, and I got on the phone. And I

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said something like I think the judge is a blank blank pig. We’re gonna peel these in him— ain't

no telling what all I said I mean I was angry. But they couldn't print what I said. They later put it

in the matter of fact, in the Daily Mississippian back during that same error, if you want to find it

in archives. They were just blanking everything out, you know, that I said. And I remember the

next day after came out in the paper we had a black counselor named Wayne Johnson, was a

minister on campus that was its situated and then Wye building the old Wye building, I don't

know what it is called now, but anyway he was— Wayne Johnson called me in and said, he said,

“I just read what you said in the paper.” He said, “Have you lost your mind? Have you totally

lost you mind? This judge that you were talking about,” he said, “Do you realize that you might

have to go before this same judge one day?” and I told Reverend Myles ,Johnson, Wayne

Johnson, I told him, I said, “I don't care. I don't care.” He said, “You're not thinking. I'm sorry,

you're not thinking.” I said, “I'm thinking I just don't care. I just don't.” And so that tells you how

I felt at that particular moment. I really just didn't care. After we got kicked out of school, Dr.

Cole and I left. Left Ole Miss and went to Gary, Indiana, the end of that summer and and got a

job at the steel mill. And we worked at the steel mill that summer and that fall we were admitted

into a Tougaloo College. And Tougaloo College gave me a chance to settle down a little bit and

focus in on the future and to think about how I really could maybe, make some change some

positive changes in the world without getting myself killed in the process. And so, it really was a

sobering, nice period of time at Tougaloo College. I enjoyed that time. I needed that. I thank God

things worked out the way they did. I don’t think that if I stayed at Ole Miss, I just don't think

my life would be the same here today. So I graduated from Tougaloo that same— within that one

year, so I didn't lose really any time, and I was admitted to the University of Michigan Law

School that fall— excuse me, summer. I enrolled in a twenty seven month expedited program,

and I said I'm going back to Mississippi. I can't wait to get back to Mississippi. So I finished in

twenty seven months and twenty seven months I went to Jackson, Mississippi, to train as a civil

rights lawyer. I stayed there for nine months. I moved to to look Tupelo in June of 1974, and I

opened my practice as a civil rights lawyer. I filed suit against every police officer, every

highway patrolman, every business, every sheriff. All they had to do was come see me, and I was

able to express in the courts what I couldn't do when I was a student at Ole Miss, so it was a

great period of time for me to— when people would come in and they heard about what I was

doing, and they didn't have to have any money. All they needed was a cause. And I always tell

Edited


them, I said, “It's not about you. It's about the greater cause.” I'm representing here now so if you

feel like you've been discriminated against, and you are willing to let it hit the press and you are

willing to understand that you might not get anything out of it. In fact, you might lose your job,

too, but if you want to do it, let's go. And I found a number of people that were willing to

actually sacrifice at that time and so that's how we did it the civil rights. And when I did civil

rights work, and I did that from 1974 until 1984. I practiced civil rights law.

JS [56:17-56:20]: Have any of your relatives attended the University of Mississippi?

KM [56:21-59:48]: They have. My daughter, as a matter of fact, graduated from Ole Miss. I'm

proud of that. Matter of fact, when she was in high school— she graduated from high school in

2006, and she said she was going over to Georgia. And I said, “Georgia? Why are you going to

Georgia?” I said, “Go to Ole Miss.” And she said, “Why would you want me to go to Ole Miss?

It's the same one that kicked you out, right?” I said, “That's the reason that I want you to go to

Ole Miss. I said, “You’ll finish, perhaps, what I started.” And so, she was not persuaded to go to

Ole Miss. She wanted to go to Atlanta Clark University, and so I took her over to at Atlanta

Clark. and we looked at it. And my wife and I together just telling her why that's all bad for you.

She still said, “I'm going to Atlanta Clark.” It's your choice. It’s your school. So finally, I told

her, I said, “Well, I'm gonna leave it strictly up to you.” I said, “But now I can tell you this much,

just fully consider,” I said, “If you if you go to Atlanta Clark,” I said, “I'm gonna take you over

there and you won't have a vehicle, now.” I said, “But if you go to Ole Miss,” I said, “You can

ride over there.” [Laughter] And before I— That's how that's how she went to Ole Miss. I told

her she could get the car, so when the time came to go to Ole Miss, Nancy said, “So where's my

car?” And I said, “Well,” I said, “That let's go and go by this. Send me some grades first.” I said,

“Send me some grades.” And I said, if you are an honor student,” I said, “I'll get you a car.” And

she said, “But suppose I want to come home.” I said, “Well you know, Daddy’ll come pick you

up.” I said. That lasted about a month. She wore me out, and I gave her a car. [Laughter] But she

graduated from Ole Miss and graduated as a political science major. She agreed to that she

would study to be a lawyer, as well. And so she got her degree, and it was handed to her by Dr.

Donald Cole, who was assistant Provost at the University. And he and I still, we’re still the best

of friends. So I called him. I said, “Can you arrange— Wouldn't this be something? A historical

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moment, if you could arrange actually handing her her degree? And so, he worked it out with the

chancellor and the head of the department. So when her time came, I think the head of

department or the Dean always handed out the certificates or whatever, and when hers came, he

walked up and handed it to her. And we recorded that moment live. And that was beautiful.

Anyway, she finished from the University and enrolled in law school at the Western University

in Michigan, and she graduated from Ole Miss in [20]09. And graduated from law school and

[20]12 and went to California with her brother. She has a twin brother, and stayed out in

California for five years and finally responded positively to my request to come home, you

know, and work in my firm. So she took the bar exam in Tennessee, and she's been practicing

with me for almost three years.

JS [59:49- 1:00:08]: What is your hope for student activists and future students at the University

of Mississippi? Like when you think about, you know, what you contributed, to activism there,

what’s your hope for students in the future?

JM: [1:00:09- 1:02:15] I'm always proud when I see the students at the University stand up for

what's right. That was a period of time when I was really concerned about that at the University.

I thought that there was some young leaders, black leaders, there, who didn't understand how

important it is for them to speak up when issues concern you know the African Americans, or the

students. And now I do commend, from what I've read and what I've heard about the students at

the University. I want them to do it in such a manner or that they don't make the mistake that I

made, as far as getting kicked out of school. I don't encourage that. But actually, you can actually

speak up at the university now and don't have to have the same fear, I suppose, of getting kicked

out as we did. As our lawyer pointed out back in those days, he was saying that man, when they

have a football game, and those football players literally tore up campus on more than one

occasion. I mean, tore up chairs. I mean, they had fights and did all this stuff. And they didn't get

kicked out. I mean, they were put on probation or something, you know. And what we did was a

was a disturbance. There's no question about it. There was a minor disturbance, but it was fairly

minor. There was nobody got into a fight or anything like that. But we we did go in

unauthorized, for sure. And one would look back at it and say that we should have receive some

type of punishment, but to be expelled from school was a bit harsh. But the word had come down

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from the governor. We were told at that time, that the government was saying that what

happened at the university need to set an example, so it doesn't happen, not only at Ole Miss, but

at Mississippi State and Southern and the rest of the universities. So they actually used us to set

an example.

JS [1:02:19- 1:02:24] That’s the last question that I had for you. I want to thank you for allowing

me to interview you, Mr. Mayfield.

KM [1:02: 25-]: It's been my pleasure.

AD[ 1:03:04]: Can I add one thing— and maybe you don’t have any input. So the larger project

is kind of, might potentially be about incarceration across the state, but students, especially

students that ended up in prison or in Parchman. And I want to talk about that just for a second.

So that, what happened to you was happening at other campuses, as well. Did you ever have any

insight or have since learned about that across the state? The practice of kind of rounding

students up and kind of cataloging in that way? Putting them in warehouses in that way? Or did

you ever have experience, in your legal career, kind of dealing with that later after the fact?

KM [1:03:05] The only thing that I had heard the incident at Ole Miss was made news by itself,

if you will. Now, there was an incident that happened I think maybe a year before ours at

Mississippi Valley State University, where there was an uprising there. And I later got an

opportunity, as a matter of fact, to meet the guy who was president of the Black Student Union at

Valley State, at the time. He later became a lawyer himself and was a student in law school. So I

got a chance to learn about the Mississippi Valley State University. But we had heard of what

happened at Mississippi Valley State University and the arrests there, and of course, the arrests

that took place that Jackson State. But other than that, the Ole Miss incident was one that was

kind of newsworthy to us.

AH [1:04:04-1:04:14]: Probably just something to ask everybody just ‘cause you never know

how they [inaudible 1:04:12] . Yeah.

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KM: Is that it? All right. Well, very good. Did we last an hour?

AD: I think we got an hour and four of record time.

KM: [Laughter] No, I’ve always been a big talker.

[End of Interview]

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