On August 18, 1955, he became president of Mississippi Southern College, a minor teachers college in
Hattiesburg.
University status In the early 1960s he obtained the support of fellow segregationist Governor
Ross Barnett to elevate MSC to university status. This action paved the way for Mississippi Southern College to become a university, and on February 27, 1962, the school was officially renamed The University of Southern Mississippi (USM). and Lt. Gov.
Paul B. Johnson at signing of bill granting university status.
Promoter of segregation He was a prominent and active supporter of the state political establishment's racial policies. McCain was a founder and led it as an authoritarian general leading his troops for decades.
Clyde Kennard When
Clyde Kennard, a black Korean War veteran attempted to enroll at Mississippi Southern in the late 1950s, McCain made major efforts with local black leaders, the state political establishment and the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission to prevent it. The Commission sent Zack J. Van Landingham, a "subversive investigator", to assist McCain. He handled Kennard's file personally and had John Reiter, the school security chief, look for any criminal record from Kennard's time in Chicago. On September 15, 1959, Kennard was falsely arrested by constables Charlie Ward and Lee Daniel for reckless driving upon returning to his car from a meeting with President McCain. Kennard was twice arrested on trumped-up criminal charges and eventually sentenced to seven years in the state prison. McCain's direct involvement in this incident is unclear. He was certainly as aware as other intimate members of the state political establishment were that the charges were fraudulent but made no public objection. the reality of Mississippi life saying that those blacks who sought to desegregate Southern schools were "imports" from the North. (Kennard was, in fact, a native and resident of Hattiesburg.) McCain said, "We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a segregated society... In all fairness, I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting." "The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man's hands." McCain engaged in verified homophobic acts of purges and witch hunts of faculty and students.
1965 integration By the fall of 1965 both
Ole Miss and
Mississippi State University had been integrated—the former violently, the latter peacefully. University of Southern Mississippi leaders, such as President McCain, had come to realize that the battle to maintain segregation was lost. Therefore, they made extensive confidential plans for the admission and attendance of their first black students. A faculty guardian and tutor was secretly appointed for each. The campus police department had very strict orders to prevent or quickly stop any incident involving the two black students. Student athletic, fraternity, and political leaders were recruited to keep the calm and protect the university from such bad publicity as Ole Miss had suffered from its reaction to
James Meredith. As a result, black students
Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong and
Raylawni Branch were enrolled without incident in September 1965. As the years passed after 1965, McCain gradually lost the iron disciplined control he had held over the university. After the
Jackson State killings of student protesters on Thursday and Friday, May 14–15, 1970, some 75 black students staged a
sit-down at his home and then his office. Their demands included the integration of the campus police, the establishment of black social
sororities and
fraternities, and the inclusion of blacks on the faculty. Preparing for a protracted process of negotiations, McCain asked the black students to elect a leadership group with which he would deal. At this time he was also in a struggle to keep the
ACLU off his campus. This culminated in January 1972, with a Federal District Court order to grant the ACLU a charter to operate on campus. In the twenty years that McCain served as president, enrollment grew from 3000 in 1955 to more than 11,000 in 1975. When he retired in 1975, a Chair of History and the university archival library were named in his honor. He then kept an office in the library as President Emeritus. He died on September 5, 1993, and is interred at Lakewood Memorial Park in Jackson, Mississippi. ==Later life==