http://cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=56506Before Henry Ashford started his senior year of high school in 1966, his father sat him down and asked him if he wanted to be one of the first black students to attend Starkville High School.
"He wanted me to do it," Ashford said. "So I did it -- mostly for him."
Ashford was one of five black seniors to graduate from SHS in 1967 -- the first year black students attended what had previously been an all-white high school. They weren't alone -- black students in Columbus and other parts of Mississippi began attending all white high schools by choice in the late '60s before the state began court-ordered integration in the '70s
