JACKSON, Miss.
Constitutional law professor William P. Murphy, who enraged Mississippi segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s by teaching that school integration was the law of the land, died Saturday of prostate cancer. He was 87.
He died in Chapel Hill, N.C., where had retired, said his son, Rob Murphy. The family said a memorial service will be held in Chapel Hill and burial will be in Houston, Miss. Dates for the services were pending.
William Murphy taught from 1953-62, at the University of Mississippi, which had the state’s only law school at the time. He moved away from Oxford about a month before federal troops were called in to enforce the admission of the first black student at Ole Miss, undergraduate James Meredith.
He was, “in effect, run out of the state” for teaching law students that public school systems had to abide by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, journalist Bill Minor said Saturday.
“I remember there was some young legislator who was in the (Ole Miss) law school who was talking about this subversive law professor,” said Minor, who has covered Mississippi politics since 1947.
Murphy grew up in Memphis, Tenn., and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia and a doctorate from Yale University. When he taught at Ole Miss, it was a training ground for many who went on to serve in elected office.
