1962

• Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, by Stephen E. Ambrose (Louisiana State University Press)
• Race and the Renewal of the Church, by Will D. Campbell (Westminster Press).
• We Are a Third Race, by Will D. Campbell (Forward Movement Publications).
• The Spangled Road, by Borden Deal (Scribner).
• A Family's Affairs, by Ellen Douglas (Houghton).
• Early Prose and Poetry, by William Faulkner, edited by Carvel Collins (Little, Brown).
• Five Plays, by Tennessee Williams (Secker & Warburg).
• The Reivers, the last novel by William Faulkner (Random House).
• Three Papers on Fiction, addresses by Eudora Welty (Smith College).
• Africa: Her History, Lands, and People, by John Alfred Williams (Cooper Square).

March 26: Phillip Thompson born in Columbus, Mississippi.

Premiere of the films Sweet Bird of Youth and Period of Adjustment, based on works by Tennessee Williams.

William Faulkner receives his second Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Reivers and a Gold Medal for Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Walker Percy receives the National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Moviegoer.

September 30: As James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, riots begin on campus in which two people were killed and many others injured. National Guard troops are quickly committed and President Kennedy orders 20,000 federal troops to the area.