The Fifth Circuit was a key court during the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s as it covered Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, all of which had varying levels of racial segregation.

During his tenure, Cameron, a segregationist, often found himself in the minority of civil-rights cases, with a group of more liberal judges, known as the Fifth Circuit Four, overturning Jim Crow laws.

He initially worked as a German and Latin teacher at Norfolk Academy before starting his legal practice in Meridian.

[5] The Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Harlan Stone ruled against Opp Mills.

Cameron defended Bilbo in that he felt the senator had always encouraged peaceful relations between races and that "outside influences" were trying to make trouble in Mississippi.

[2] With the retirement of Judge Edwin R. Holmes, President Dwight Eisenhower nominated Cameron as his replacement on the Fifth Circuit on February 18, 1955.

He earned the support of both of the states segregationist senators James Eastland and John Stennis as well as the American Bar Association and the NAACP.

He shall demonstrate to the county registrar a reasonable understanding of the duties and obligations of citizenship under a constitutional form of government."

In his opinion joined by Claude Feemster Clayton and Sidney Carr Mize, Cameron applied the Minor v. Happersett precedent in ruling that the privilege of voting was not given by the constitution and that states could govern their own elections.

[10] Cameron dissented, writing that "They were accused and convicted by competent proof, including a picture and writings authored by them, of public boorishness, of defying the authority of the officials of their school and state, of blatant insubordination, of endeavoring to disrupt the school they had agreed to support with loyalty, as well as to break up other schools, and had openly incited to riot; and when their time came to speak, they stood mute, offering only one of their group along with the college president and two newspaper reporters as witnesses."

A large gathering of city and county officers and the use of fire hose finally avoided an open clash between the two groups.

[12] The day after the court's order took effect, July 18, Cameron, who was not part of the panel that heard the case, issued a stay.

[15] Rep. George W. Andrews, who once wrote "They put the Negroes in the schools and now they've driven God out," proposed an inquiry into Cameron's charges.