Joseph Eason Wroten ( February 28 , 1925 &ndash; March 17 , 2005 ) was an American lawyer and politician in the state of Mississippi . He represented Greenville and Washington County in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1952 to 1963 . A progressive Democrat for that time and place , he was " an almost lone dissenter in the state 's ' massive resistance ' policies " in its fight against racial integration . In the 1950s Wroten consistently spoke and voted against the Mississippi legislature 's maneuvers to divert state monies to the Citizens ' Councils . Out of 122 representatives , only he and Karl Wiesenburg of Pascagoula voted nay in Governor Ross Barnett 's special session called to stop James Meredith from enrolling at the University of Mississippi , which saw the Ole Miss riot of 1962 . He was defeated in his bid for re-election the next year . He went on to be elected chairman of the Washington County Democratic Executive Committee , a racially integrated political committee which announced its pro-integration platform at the 1968 Mississippi State Democratic convention . At this time Wroten 's party affiliation was Loyalist Democrat . He and a delegation of the executive committee went to the National Democratic Convention in Chicago , and in a credentials fight we succeeded in prevailing over the old guard conservative delegation composed of the governor and others from Mississippi , and we were the ones who were seated . It was a racially inclusive delegation from Mississippi that was seated at Chicago in 1968 . I was a member of that group . As a youth , Wroten earned the Eagle Scout award . In 1942 while a pre-med student at Millsaps College he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve and served as a navigation , gunnery and communication officer and as lay chaplain , where he integrated the worship service , then was a Naval officer through 1946 . While overseas in the Navy he decided to become an attorney , and graduated from law school at Ole Miss in 1948 . In both colleges he was president of the Kappa Sigma fraternity . In the 1970s he worked as a judge in the Washington County courts . From 1984 until his death in 2005 , he was Clerk of Court of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court , Northern District of Mississippi in Aberdeen . He taught Sunday School in the United Methodist Church for 60 years . Wroten died at the age of 80 on March 17 , 2005
National Democratic Convention in Chicago
1968 Democratic National Convention
Joe Wroten