Wilmjax News

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, North Carolina, 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, Mississippi 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.

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Chapel Hill — Police and area business owners are worried that a shooting at a Chapel Hill nightclub that left six people injured might be gang related.

Hundreds of people were inside Visions Nite Club, at 136 E. Rosemary St., around 1 a.m. Monday, police said. An argument got out of control, and the shooter, who might have used a 9 mm handgun, fired six rounds, injuring two security workers and four patrons.

“Everyone tried to get out at the same time, so it was mass hysteria,” Lt. Kevin Gunter, with the Chapel Hill Police Department said.

In the low lighting and the confusion, the shooter managed to leave the club shortly after firing, Gunter said.

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