Mississippi’s Crusading Gadfly
While others maintain the fight is over, attorney Alvin Chambliss continues to breathe life into Mississippi’s famed college desegregation case.
By B. Denise Hawkins
HOUSTON
Attorney Alvin O. Chambliss Jr. says that as long as the Ayers v. Fordice case is alive, there’s hope for Mississippi’s three historically Black universities and for the liberation of Black America. Chambliss should know. For more than a quarter century he stubbornly has breathed life into Ayers, the protracted legal battle over the desegregation of Mississippi’s higher education system.
Last spring, just as a $503 million settlement was approved by the 2002 Mississippi Legislature, signed by a federal judge and poised to put the litigation to rest, Chambliss decided to vigorously resuscitate the higher education desegregation case he has been synonymous with for 27 years (see Black Issues, May 10, 2001).
