Rodney Bennett becomes first African-American to preside at the University of Southern Mississippi

New president of the University of Southern Mississippi.,Dr. Rodney Bennett

More than 50 years ago, the president of an all-white university in Mississippi went to such great lengths to keep a black man from enrolling as a student, that he had the man arrested on trumped up charges and sent to prison.

Treated harshly behind the walls of the historic Parchman penitentiary, that man, a Korean War veteran, was forced to work on their cotton plantation until he collapsed from the pangs of cancer and later died.

That man was Clyde Kennard.

Not many are familiar with Kennard‘s fight for admission into what is now the University of Southern Mississippi. But Dr. Rodney Bennett is, and he’s grateful for trailblazers like Kennard, and for the opportunity he now has been given.

On February 7, Dr. Bennett became the first African-American to head the historically white university some 58 years after Kennard’s initial application to Mississippi Southern — as Southern Miss was then known — was rejected by the school’s president William D. McCain.

McCain likely knew that as a rule, no convicted felon could be admitted to any of Mississippi’s all-white colleges.

Like Kennard, Bennett never set out to make a historical statement. He does however, realize what his prodigious feat means to the black community.

Read more: The Grio