Born in Sumter County, Alabama, Meredith attended Hampden–Sydney College, Virginia.

In 1891 E. E. Meredith and Robert R. Campbell were the court appointed attorneys for Joseph Dye and Lee R. Heflin, white farm workers, who were tried for the murder of a white Fauquier County, Virginia, family (a widow and her three young children) during a robbery.

After the two killers were convicted and sentenced to death they were taken from sheriff’s deputies transporting them to another jail and lynched in Prince William County, Virginia.

[1] Meredith was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-second Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of William H.F. Lee.

This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress