Clyde Kennard

Clyde Kennard (June 12, 1927 – July 4, 1963) was an American civil rights pioneer and martyr from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and a Korean War veteran. In the 1950s, he attempted several times to enroll at the all-white Mississippi Southern College (now the University of Southern Mississippi) to complete his undergraduate degree started at the University of Chicago. Although the United States Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, USM rejected him. Kennard was among the thousands of local activists in the 1940s and 1950s who pressed for their rights.

After Kennard published a letter in the local paper about integrated education, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a state-supported agency, conspired to have him arrested on false charges. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years at Parchman Penitentiary, the state's notorious high-security prison. He became terminally ill with cancer. The state governor refused to pardon him, but released him on parole in January 1963. Kennard died that year in July. After publication in 2005 of evidence that Kennard had been framed, supporters tried to secure a posthumous pardon for him, but Governor Haley Barbour refused. Supporters gained Barbour's cooperation in petitioning the court to review Kennard's case, and in 2006 his conviction was overturned completely.

Kennard was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1927. When he was 12, he went to Chicago and lived with his older sister Sara, in order to go full-time to public school. He graduated from Wendell Phillips High School. He enlisted in the US Army, serving for seven years: first in Germany after World War II, then during the Korean War serving as a paratrooper.

Kennard returned to Chicago after his service, starting college at the University of Chicago. In 1955, after completing his junior year, Kennard returned to Hattiesburg to help his mother after his stepfather died. He had purchased land for her in nearby Eatonville, where he started a chicken farm. He taught Sunday school at the Mary Magdalene Baptist Church he attended in Eatonville.

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