By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
Former Mississippi U.S. Attorney H.M. Ray, whose 20- year reign included the 1960s civil rights era, and who served under five presidents, died at age 86, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported.
Ray was appointed by President Kennedy to the Jackson, Miss. office, and resigned right after Ronald Reagan became president in 1981.
“We were very close. He was a great boss,” former assistant U.S. attorney John Hailman of Oxford, Miss. told the Commercial Appeal. “Mainly, he insisted that we do the right thing. He was very courageous about taking unpopular stances, and he always backed us up.”
Some of his higher profile cases included the prosecution of four men linked to the shooting deaths of two people during rioting over the entrance of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962, the paper reported. The men were not convicted.
Ray also served in the state House from 1948 to 1951. After resigning as U.S. Attorney, he went off to practice law with the Wise, Carter, Child & Caraway firm in Jackson. He then went to work for then-state Atty. Gen. Mike Moore, the Commercial Appeal reported.
“He was quite a mentor for me, and I learned a lot from him. He was a great lawyer and an even better person,” Moore told the paper.
