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Negro Is Jailed After Attempt [Note: C/L 9-16] To Enroll In Southern Classes

HATTIESBURG (UPI) – Negro Clyde Kennard, a chicken farmer who once attended the University of Chicago, was jailed Tuesday minutes after he tried in vain to become the first member of his race to enter a white Mississippi college.

The two constables who arrested the 30-year-old bachelor said their action had nothing to do with his integration attempt at Mississippi Southern College. They said he had been speeding and they found whiskey—illegal to possess in Mississippi—under the front seat of his car.

The Negro was released five hours later under $600 bond.

Kennard had announced in advance that he would appear on the campus to register for fall classes.

Eloise Fairley, a cousin of Kennard, said after his arrest, “Clyde neither drinks nor smokes. In fact, he doesn’t drink soft drinks.

PAPERS IRREGULAR

Kennard, who lives with his mother on a farm near here, appeared on the campus in his late-model Mercury station wagon shortly after registration began. He had a 12-minute conference with college President W. D. McCain in McCain’s office and then returned to his car where he found constables Lee Daniels and Charlie Ward waiting for him.

The college, in a brief statement, said Kennard “was denied admission because of deficiencies and irregularities in his application papers.”

McCain said the college was forbidden by law to reveal the contents of applications filed with the registrar, but he said “hundreds of students” are refused admission every year for the same reason listed in Kennard’s rejection.

Constable Daniels said he and Ward saw a car speeding and started chasing it. He said the car entered the Mississippi Southern campus and they found it parked on the campus with its driver gone.

He said they decided to wait

INDEX

Page
Affairs of State……..2
Amusements……..20
Classified Ads…..25-27
Comics………22, 24
Editorial…..10
Financial….23
Miss. Notebook…….3
Radio & TV Logs…….21
Sports…….17-21, 28
Women………12-15

at the car for the driver to return so they could arrest hm for reckless driving. While they waited, he said, they found five half-pints of assorted liquor, two of them untaxed moonshine, under the front seat of the car.

Kennard was arrested as soon as he returned to the car and then placed in the Forrest county jail on charges of reckless driving and illegal possession of liquor.

After being lodged in the Forrest county jail, Kennard was taken by the two constables to a justice of peace court, where he declined to be tried at that time, asking for more time to prepare a defense.

Justice T. C. Hobby set bond at $600 – $500 for the whisky charge and $100 for the reckless driving charge. Members of the local NAACP began raising money for his release, but later two of his neighbors put up the bond money and Kennard was released. No date was set for his trial.

Kennard was denied that there was whiskey in the car. He said he was also undecided about whether he would continue his efforts to enroll at Southern.

Highway Patrolmen and Zack Van Landingham, chief investigator for the State Sovereignty Commission, where on the campus when Kennard arrived.

Clarion-Ledger
9-16-59

Kennard file

[stamp of STATE SOVEREIGNTY COMMISSION with date of SEP 23 1959 with lines for INDEXED, SERIALIZED, and FILED, initialed by [?]]

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