Deaths on July 4

Clyde Kennard, American activist and martyr (b. 1927)

Clyde Kennard (June 12, 1927 – July 4, 1963) was an American Korean War veteran and civil rights leader from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 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, the college 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.