Courage under fire.

An Air Force veteran born in Kosciusko in 1933, James Meredith attended Jackson State for two years before he applied to the University of Mississippi. It took two tries and cadre of federal marshals to get Meredith through the University gates, on October 1, 1962, a day followed by violent rioting that left two people dead, and nearly one hundred injured. Once order was restored, Meredith, like many African Americans in the Hills before him, persevered in a hostile environment, graduating with a degree in history. Still later, he refused to be defined by his most famous moment; not unlike Revels who aligned himself with Democrats, Meredith has over the years made surprising alliances, refusing to march to anyone’s drummer but his own. 

Another notable from the Mississippi Hills who resists definition was also born in Kosciusko, to two unmarried teenagers. Her mother a housemaid and her father a barber, she spent her first six years with her grandmother Hattie Mae. The child was named Orpah Gail Winfrey after the Book of Ruth, but folks around Kosciusko couldn’t seem to say the name correctly, and eventually she was called Oprah Gail Winfrey. Later, the “Gail” and the “Winfrey” would become superfluous.