Full Text of "Negro Kennard Fined $600”; September 29, 1959

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[Across the top of the article are five black-and-white photographs, the top three of three white men, specifically the right-side of each man’s face. Captions from left to right are JUDGE T. C. HOBBY, CONSTABLE CHARLIE WARD, and CONSTABLE LEE DANIELS. The bottom two photographs are of two black men, specifically the left side of their faces. The Captions read DEFENDANT CLYDE KENNARD and ATTORNEY R. J. BROWN. Below the bottom caption reads: Staff photos by Winfred Moncrief)

Negro Kennard Fined $600

Justice of the Peace T. C. Hobby today imposed fines totaling $600 on 30-year-old Clyde Kennard, a Negro who landed in jail after trying to gain admission to al-white [sic] Mississippi Southern College.

Kennard, charged with reckless driving and whiskey possession, was arrested Sept. 15 on the MSC campus shortly after his application for enrollment was rejected on the grounds of scholastic deficiency.

Judge Hobby today, after hearing the testimony of two constables who arrested the Forrest county chicken farmer, said he had never known of a case “where the state proved more clearly the guilt of the defendant.”

The judge imposed a $100 fine on the reckless driving charge and $500 on the other count. He set appeal bond at $1,000 on the whiskey possession and $500 on the reckless driving. R. J. Brown, Negro attorney from Vicksburg and counsel for the defense, said he would post the bond before noon.

The defense offered no witnesses at this morning’s hearing before Hobby.

Constables Lee Daniels and Charlie Ward gave this account of what happened the morning of Sept. 15:

They were patrolling the Eatonville Road when Kennard, travelling at a high rate of speed, came out of a side road onto the black-top, forcing a pickup truck to swerve onto the shoulder of the road.

The constables gave chase, but lost Kennard when he wheeled his late model station wagon into a gravelled side road. They next saw him as he entered the campus at Mississippi Southern; but again lost track of him.

When they located his parked car they found its doors were locked and they waited until Kennard came out of the school administration building (where he’d been denied admission as a student). They arrested him and charged him with reckless driving.

Kennard asked that they bring his car to the county jail and he unlocked it so that Ward could drive it.

Daniels and Kennard traveled to jail in Daniels’ patrol car, the one which had been used earlier in the chase.

But before they left the college Ward found a package on the floor in the front of Kennard’s vehicle. In the paper-wrapped parcel were four half-pints of moonshine whiskey and some wine. Some moonshine and wine were introduced in court today as evidence. Daniels said these were the bottles found in the Kennard vehicle.

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Kennard—

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Kennard, who has said from the beginning that he had no whiskey in the station wagon, said nothing in court.

Brown said the matter will be appealed to Forrest County Court.

In cross-questioning the constables he said he could not understand how they got close enough to Kennard to read his license tag number (they said they did) without being able to catch up wiht [sic] Kennard.

Daniels said the reason was that his own car was at a standstill and that the motor was not running “when Kennard spun out of that side road—he got quite a start on us. We got up to 80 and 90 trying to catch him.”

County Attorney Harold Cubley represented the state at the trial.

Officials at Mississippi Southern College said when told of Kennard’s arrest they knew nothing of it; and that hundreds of white students had been rejected by the school because of deficient scholastic records.