High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Richard Holmes (b. Chicago, Feb. 17, 1944) is medical doctor and one of the five young black Mississippians who pioneered the effort to desegregate the major universities of Mississippi as part of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968). His was by far the most peaceful and least noticed of the efforts which had begun with the ultimately tragic efforts of Clyde Kennard beginning in 1956 to enter what now is the University of Southern Mississippi