Kenneth Mayfield

The Civil Rights Lawyer Kenneth Mayfield

When I returned to Mississippi to practice Civil Rights, the rage and anger that I experienced at Ole Miss was slowly re-ignited. I still retained dormant memories of the mistreatments that I had received in Mississippi, including being kicked out of Ole Miss. I was determined to use the Courts to challenge all of the Jim Crow laws and practices that were still alive and well in Mississippi in the 1970s. This was after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barring employment discrimination, the Civil Voting Rights Act of 1965 which prohibited discrimination in voting and the Housing Acting of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing, yet Mississippi was still trying to hold onto its past Jim Crow practices. Immediately after I graduated from law school, I moved to Jackson, Mississippi to begin a one-year internship with Anderson, Banks, Nichols and Leventhal. My internship, which was funded by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, was perfect for the training that I needed. There were five attorneys in the firm and each was uniquely qualified in different areas of practice. Mel Leventhal was the only white in the firm and was the primary litigator for civil rights cases. During my brief internship I was determined to learn all I would about civil rights and as well as other areas of law so I could begin my career as soon as I passed the bar.