Biography
Clennon Washington King Jr. was a Black college professor who in June 1958 tried to register for graduate study at the all-white University of Mississippi. State authorities seized him and committed him to the state mental hospital at Whitfield for a psychiatric examination — on the theory that any Negro who tried to integrate Ole Miss must be insane. No criminal charge was brought, because a charge would have required a court. A contemporary United Press International report says he was released on June 18, after twelve days, when hospital doctors pronounced him sane. Martin Luther King Jr. protested the confinement to Governor James P. Coleman. King later became the second African American man to run for President of the United States.
