Dr. Richard E. Holmes, Mississippi State's first Black student, dies at 82

Dr. Richard E. Holmes, the first Black student at Mississippi State University, died Friday at age 82. He walked onto the campus in his hometown of Starkville on July 19, 1965. He spent the next six decades as a student, a physician and a champion of the school that opened its doors to him.

A quiet start to a historic enrollment

Holmes enrolled just three years after James Meredith's forced entry into the University of Mississippi. Instead of a standoff, his arrival was calm. In a letter he gave to administrators and read to reporters that day, he wrote that he had not come for fanfare or publicity. He said he was a lifelong Mississippian who wanted to study at a respected university that happened to sit in his hometown.

Years later he remembered it as quiet and serene, with curiosity and disbelief but no catcalls and no racial slurs. He said that for the first time, Mississippi State would reflect the face of the nation.

The dream started much earlier. In 1957 a 13-year-old Holmes stood at the corner of Main Street and Washington Street and watched the homecoming parade roll through town. He later said the crowd and the fight song set his destiny in motion. He knew he would one day be a Bulldog.

From the classroom to the clinic

Holmes earned a liberal arts degree from Mississippi State in 1969 and a master's degree in microbiology in 1973. He received his medical degree from Michigan State University in 1977 and worked as an emergency room physician in Birmingham, Alabama.

He returned to Mississippi in 2003 as a staff physician at the Longest Student Health Center on the Starkville campus. The university later gave him an honorary Doctor of Science degree.

Honors that carry his name

In 1991 the school named its cultural diversity center after him. He and his wife Judie later endowed a minority scholarship fund that also bears his name. In 2006 he was named the university's National Alumnus of the Year, the first Black alumnus to receive the honor.

In August the university dedicated the Dr. Richard E. Holmes Plaza between the Colvard Student Union and the historic YMCA Building. University President Mark E. Keenum called it a place where everyone can find opportunity and belonging.

Keenum said Holmes was a man of courage, vision and patience whose shadow over the university was long and productive. It was also a shadow that leaned forward. "I will miss his company and his counsel," he said.

Holmes, who once said he would always be a loyal Bulldog, is remembered as a trailblazer whose quiet courage helped bring a Mississippi campus into the civil rights era.