Preparing To Serve: The Legacy of Mr. Joe Calhoun

Local & National News | June 20, 2026 | 4:00 p.m. CDT

Edited: June 22, 2026 | 12:40 p.m. CDT

Written by: Gilbert Barnes Carter III

This article is the fourth in an exclusive 11-part story series to feature the life and legacy of Mr. Joe Calhoun and promote his personal memoir - 9 LIVES: REINVENTION OF AN INVADER. It will be released in 2026.

I shared an insightful conversation with a close friend and colleague, Mr. Lakethen Mason, recently about why not enough younger Americans, especially younger Black Americans, have the desire or wherewithal to have participation during social justice movements today. We generated one specific theory. Younger Americans are simply not willing to endure being subjected to the harassment, humiliation, imprisonment, intimidation, and physical violence that so many workers of virtue - Black ancestors, Black elders, Black forefathers, and their comrades - elected to receive in the name of equality and posterity for generations of Black children to come.

The indomitable Dr. James Howard Meredith and Mr. Joe Calhoun were at the tip of the spear during the March Against Fear in 1966, also known as the "Meredith March", and the March Against Fear in 1969, respectively. Their trajectories to promulgate civil and human rights are as different as their individual upbringings. Mr. Calhoun received immersive and international cultural experiences during his formative years. Dr. Meredith learned how to suppress southern white aggression and insolence as a young boy during the Great Depression in Attala County, Mississippi.

** "James Meredith had long considered himself the sole architect of his special destiny. When he was about seven years old, he accompanied his father, Moses 'Cap' Meredith, to the home of a white farmer. Cap owned cows that had been grazing on the farmers property and he needed to pay the white man. He called out his presence from the front walkway. After a long, long silence, the white man told Cap to go to the back porch, per racial custom. But Cap refused to budge. For three hours, he sat on his mule wagon. He would not even let his squirming son urinate in the woods. Finally, the white man walked outside to conduct their business. The child learned his first lesson about manhood."

I recalled a story that my mother, Ms. Carolyn M. Carter-Estes McCright, shared with me about my late grandfather, Mr. Rase "Shine" Burkley, after reading the account of Mr. Meredith asserting his dignity. The premise is based on an interaction my grandfather had on one occasion with a white male shopkeeper in an undisclosed location in rural western Tennessee. My grandfather worked as a local area delivery driver for a time. One day, he had an assignment to deliver a cache of goods to the shopkeeper. Shortly after arriving at the store, the shopkeeper met him outside and jeered, "I don't allow Niggers to come in my store." Without hesitation, my grandfather tossed all of the goods on the ground in front of him and replied, "You can pick it up your damn self."

March Against Fear - "Meredith March" 

Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi 

1966

Dr. Meredith initially designed his march to be executed at a micro scale. With the Peabody Hotel as the starting point, his original inner circle of concern - Mr. Claude Sterrett, Mr. Joseph Crittenden, Mr. Robert Weeks, and Mr. Sherwood Ross - stood fast with him at the inception of their execution before the scale was expanded exponentially by Ambassador Andrew Young, Mr. Floyd McKissick, Mr. Roy Wilkins, Mr. Stokely Carmichael, Mr. Whitney Young, and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That expansion was activated as a collective outpouring of support in the aftermath of Dr. Meredith being shot in Hernando, Mississippi after rallying victoriously with embattled Black residents by facilitating new voter registration during the first major circuit of his march en route to Coldwater, Mississippi on Monday, June 6, 1966. His march was completed on Sunday, June 26.

March Against Fear

West Memphis, Arkansas to Little Rock, Arkansas

1969

Prerequisites for Service - Inspiration

There were numerous tragic events that took place prior to the pivotal surge that Mr. Calhoun, Minister Suhkara A. Yahweh, also known as Mr. Lance "Sweet Willie Wine" Watson, and their comrades made across the Arkansas Delta to Little Rock. **A white United States Postal Service worker, Mr. William Moore from Baltimore, was murdered by a coward with the Ku Klux Klan in Attala County, Alabama during the early stages of his "Freedom Walk" in 1963. Mr. Moore's goal was to extend an appeal for solidarity to Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett by marching from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. Mr. Medgar Wiley Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12, 1963. **The commentary and startling imagery of Dr. Meredith critically wounded and sprawled out across a shoulder along U.S. Highway 51 on that fateful Monday was disseminated out of news rooms from Washington, D.C. to the former Soviet Union to Spain. **Mr. Armistead Phipps, an affable, noble, and nondescript Black sharecropper from the outskirts of West Marks, Mississippi, died during a stretch of the Meredith March. Sadly, he succumbed to intense physical duress from the exacerbation of heat exhaustion due to having pre-existing health conditions. He expired at just 58 years young.

There were monumental events in addition to the Meredith March as well, such as the Freedom Rides in 1961, the national student sit-in demonstrations in 1960, the Freedom Summer in 1964, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It is clear that Mr. Calhoun elected to allocate much more energy for extracting inspiration from the byproducts of those virtuous routs without disregarding the importance of the cautionary tales.

* "We started ours by hosting a large press conference in West Memphis. The march lasted for a distance of approximately 132 miles and a span of four days. Our base of operations was in Forrest City. I, along with Lance and four other people embarked on that journey to compel people to give more attention to the intense voting rights struggle and to show that Black people could walk through the state of Arkansas without being harmed."

Prerequisites for Service - Knowledge of Self

** "Why should he have to drop his head and restrain his fist when he is insulted and abused without cause, when his father has taught him all his life to treat everybody right? Why does he have to look the other way when a white female passes by, when every day he sees his sister approached by a white man? Who is he going to hate and vent his anger on? The white man for being so cruel, or his father for being so weak? I want that teenage boy to know himself."

Dr. James Howard Meredith

Dr. Meredith and Mr. Calhoun were depicted differently in movement circles and spaces. Dr. Meredith at times was described as fiercely militant, hyperbolic, and ruggedly independent. He did not always have alignment with some of the preeminent Black civil and human rights leaders of the day. He also made the determination that events such as the march from Selma to Montgomery and the March on Washington in 1963 were performative at best. His impeccable record of service is still undeniable.

Mr. Calhoun is the consummate idealist. A defining personal characteristic that they share is their acute knowledge of themselves at their individual cores. Dr. Meredith acquired his knowledge by modeling the honorable behavior of his ancestors. Mr. Calhoun acquired his knowledge, in part, by designating Memphis as his first personal community. I can attest to the fact that I acquire my knowledge, in part, by curating family stories of our brilliance and power.

Dr. Meredith and Mr. Calhoun are also fierce proponents of new voter registration during this time in American history when voter apathy is high. They certainly project what many disillusioned younger Americans need to see to better prepare to serve: inspiration and knowledge of self.

9 LIVES: REINVENTION OF AN INVADER will be available in eBook (PDF) and paperback formats exclusively via The Book Patch (Wilshire Press) in 2026.

Next Article: DEFINING MY SERVICE...

Photo Credits:

Cover Photo by: Mr. Joe Calhoun

Body Photo by: Mr. Gary S. Whitlow - GSW ENTERPRISES

Book Chapter Photo by: Mr. Lakethen Mason

Sources:

* The excerpts are from 9 LIVES: REINVENTION OF AN INVADER. It is the personal memoir of internationally renown Civil Rights Foot Soldier and icon - Mr. Joe Calhoun. It is currently being written by Gilbert Barnes Carter III. It will be available in eBook (PDF) and paperback formats exclusively via The Book Patch (Wilshire Press) in 2026.

** Mr. Aram Goudsouzian. (2014). Down To The Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Gilbert Barnes Carter III is a Memphis-based author, child welfare advocate, community organizer, emerging farmer, gardener, journalist, and social justice advocate. He began his social justice advocacy and work by serving as a Shelby County Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) Board volunteer in 2005. He has worked since then to effectuate change for low-wage, immigrant, and migrant workers as a Temporary Workers Campaign Manager with Workers Interfaith Network; an advocate for Teamsters Local 667 sanitation workers; and a community / field organizer to uphold blight reduction, efficient public mass transit, environmental justice, food access, food justice, food security, narrative change, and public safety.