Sherwood Ross (May 5, 1933 – June 21, 2018) was an American journalist, activist, songwriter and poet. He was best known for publicizing James Meredith's historic voter registration drive through rural Mississippi called the “March Against Fear.” He was credited with helping save Meredith's life after the civil rights leader was shot during an ambush.
"James, he's got a gun!" The march set out from Memphis on June 5, 1966, with only a handful of participants – five men, including Meredith and Ross. Meredith wanted to inspire black voters in his home state of Mississippi to exercise their voting rights. His march was to become a flash-point for the civil rights movement. The next day a lone white gunman opened fire on Meredith in Hernando, Mississippi. Ross can be seen in photos tending to Meredith's gunshot wounds. Ross had hoped to avert such a tragedy by encouraging news agencies to follow the event. Meredith was ambushed all the same, but the ensuing media coverage sparked outrage and galvanized the movement's leadership, which had spurned Meredith as a lone crusader.
"James, he's got a gun!" Ross was quoted as saying in his eye-witness account of the shooting that was published on the front page of the Washington Star and other major newspapers. Photos of Meredith writhing in agony appeared in newspapers around the world. One such photo by the Associated Press garnered the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. These images – along with Ross' appearance the following day on NBC's "Today Show" calling for reinforcements – prompted Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and other civil rights leaders to rally to Mississippi to continue in Meredith's footsteps. "Thousands from all races responded over the next few weeks so that the renewed march became, literally, a turning point and victory celebration over Jim Crow in Mississippi," Ross later wrote about the event.
After his release from the hospital, Meredith rejoined marchers on June 25 – the day before the conclusion of the 220-mile trek to Jackson, Mississippi. As they descended upon the state capitol building, the number of protesters had mushroomed to an estimated 15,000. The event came to be known as the "Last Great March of the Civil Rights Era." It also signaled the beginning of the "Black Power" movement as Stokely Carmichael made a fiery speech popularizing the slogan following his trespassing arrest in Greenwood, Mississippi. Ross' involvement in publicizing the march and his efforts on behalf of Meredith were chronicled by historian Aram Goudsouzian in his 2014 book Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Meredith March Against Fear.
Goudsouzian credits Ross with helping save Meredith's life by threatening the ambulance driver with losing his job if he didn't speed up and rush Meredith to the hospital. Many years later, Meredith himself recognized Ross' contribution in a story published following Ross' death in June 2018. "The Mississippi March Against Fear was a big deal primarily because of him," Meredith told the Chicago Sun-Times. "Nobody was paying attention. I told him what I was going to do …He took it serious." Ross approached Meredith about publicizing the march after attending Meredith's announcement at the White House Conference on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C. Many observers considered it a suicide mission, as Meredith had rejected support from major civil rights groups. Following the assassination attempt on Meredith and the subsequent groundswell of support, Dr. King publicly thanked Ross for his efforts on behalf of racial equality.
Years later, Ross wrote to a media colleague that his intentions were to have Meredith "surrounded by reporters" when he trudged through Ku Klux Klan territory "so they just couldn't come and shoot him and dump his body in a swamp like the three they murdered in Philadelphia, Miss." Ross made his remarks to a producer at The New American Dream radio show, which devoted a segment of its August 18, 2015, program to his first-hand account of the Meredith march.