The First Presidential Debate will take place Friday, September 26
at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, MS - affectionately known as "Ole Miss". The moderator will be Jim Lehrer - Executive Editor and Anchor, The News Hour, PBS and the debate will be on foreign policy issues.
I was a bit startled when I first saw the location chosen for this verbal duel between Barack Obama and John McCain, because my memories of Ole Miss are not good ones. The choice of the venue is certainly historic; the first black American to be nominated by the Democratic Party to run for President will be walking into halls haunted by racial strife.
I remember driving through Mississippi with my parents as a young child in 1956. We drove slowly, fearful of attracting attention. There were no places to stop. My father would park the car, and walk away from us, purchasing food which we ate in the car. He looked white and attracted no attention, but my mom, my brother and I could not pass. Yes, I remember Mississippi.
"Ole Miss">
The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1848, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford and three branch campuses located in Booneville, Tupelo, and Southaven. UM maintains a field station in Bay Springs as well as the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Additionally, it is both a sea-grant and space-grant institute.
Sixty-nine percent of undergraduates are from Mississippi, and nineteen percent of all students are minorities. International students come from sixty-six nations.
Interestingly the nickname for the school does not come from a shortening of Mississippi.
The University got its nickname Ole Miss via a contest in 1897. That same year, the student yearbook was being published for the first time. As a way to find a name for the book, a contest was held to solicit suggestions from the student body. Elma Meek, a student at the time, submitted the winning entry of Ole Miss. Interestingly, Ole Miss is not derived from Mississippi but is actually a takeoff from the title often given to the mistress of a plantation. This sobriquet was chosen not only for the yearbook, but also became the name by which the University is now affectionately known.
The school sports teams are named "The Rebels".
The school's fight song is Forward Rebels.
The song, Dixie is an un-official fight song still popular with a large number of fans and alumni, and although not played as often as in the past, it is still performed by the Ole Miss "Pride of the South" Marching Band during the pre-game celebrations in the Grove and at least once during home games.
A modification of Dixie called Dixie Fanfare[11] is also played by the Ole Miss "Pride of the South" Marching Band.
Integrating Ole Miss
In 1961, the historically white, confederate halls of Ole Miss were challenged by a young man named James Meredith. He wrote, "President John F. Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20th 1961. The next day I sent my first letter to the University of Mississippi".
James Meredith Applies to the University of Mississippi
http://afroamhistory.about.com/...
At the time of his application, he was a student at Jackson State College, an all-black school. On February 4, 1961, Meredith received a telegram denying his admission. On February 7, Meredith sent a letter to the Department of Justice requesting assistance. In the meantime, Meredith wrote the university numerous times requesting the consideration of his application for the summer session.
The Battle for Ole Miss - Part 1
Finally, on May 31, 1961 the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed suit in the U.S. District Court. The suit alleged that Meredith was refused admission to the university based solely upon his race. After numerous legal battles and appeals, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision on September 10, 1962. The Court upheld Meredith’s right to admission at the University of Mississippi.
The Battle for Ole Miss - Part 2
Meredith Attempts to Register
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, enforcing it would not be easy. Mississippi governor Ross Barnett vowed publicly to block Meredith’s admission. Barnett was appointed registrar of the university and used his position to block Meredith’s registration. In an additional attempt to prevent Meredith’s registration, the Mississippi legislature passed a law that prohibited any person who was convicted of a state crime from admission to a state school. This law was clearly targeted at Meredith, who had been convicted of false voter registration.
In spite of the efforts to block Meredith’s registration, on September 30, a deal to allow Meredith to register was made between Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Barnett. Meredith was secretly escorted onto campus. Deputy federal marshals, U.S. border patrolmen, and federal prison guards, were stationed on and around the campus to protect him. A mob of more than two thousand converged upon the campus. Those standing guard were assaulted throughout the night with guns, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and bottles. Tear gas was used to try and control the crowd. Federal troops arrived and the mob retreated. In the end, two were dead, 28 marshals had been shot, and 160 were injured.
James Meredith and Ole Miss (newsreel footage)
Meredith Registers at the University of Mississippi
On the morning of October 1, 1962, James Meredith registered at the University of Mississippi. Meredith went on to finish his education at the university and graduated in 1964. In 1966, he published the book, Three Years in Mississippi, which was about his experiences at the university.
But Meredith's role in history did not end after his graduation and publication of his book.
On 5th June, 1966, Meredith started a solitary March Against Fear from Memphis to Jackson, to protest against racism. Soon after starting his march he was shot by sniper.
When they heard the news, other civil rights campaigners, including Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick, decided to continue the march in Meredith's name.
When the marchers got to Greenwood, Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael made his famous Black Power speech. Carmichael called for "black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, and to build a sense of community". He also advocated that African Americans should form and lead their own organizations and urged a complete rejection of the values of American society.
After hospital treatment Meredith rejoined the March Against Fear on 25th June, 1966. The following day the marchers arrived in Jackson, Mississippi. Once again the civil rights movement had shown that it would not give in to white racism.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk...
Meredith faded into obscurity in later years, and then reaped a firestorm of criticism from many black Americans when he became a Republican. But that is not the story I am telling here.
An interview with James Meredith last year:
James Meredith
Text which accompanies the video:
James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights movement figure. He was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi of Native American (Choctaw) and African American heritage. Meredith enlisted in the United States Air Force and served from 1951 to 1960. On October 1, 1962, he became the first black student at the University of Mississippi after being barred from entering on September 20. His enrollment, opposed by Governor Ross Barnett, sparked riots on the Oxford campus, which required federal troops and U.S. Marshals, which were sent by President John F. Kennedy. The riots led to a violent clash which left two people dead, including a French journalist Paul Guihard, 48 soldiers injured and 30 U.S. Marshals with gun wounds. His actions are regarded as a pivotal moment in the history of civil rights. He graduated on August 18, 1963 with a degree in history. Meredith on on June 6, 1966 led a civil rights march, the March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. During the march James Howard Meredith was wounded by sniper Aubrey James Norvell. The photograph of Meredith after being shot won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1967.
James Meredith - though forgotten by many, has not forgotten the significance of his role in history, nor the symbolism of Barack Obama debating there.
Meredith will be leading another march:
The group is small, but its mission carries the weight of the world.
They're taking ten days to march from Jackson to Ole Miss, the site of a presidential debate between candidates John McCain and Barack Obama.
Marchers will demand a plan for future federal policy on battling AIDS.
"I consider this to be the most important thing since the Martin Luther King assassination," said James Meredith, Civil Rights Activist.
...
"This issue on AIDS, particularly in Mississippi, has to do only with the issue of the poor," said Meredith.
Organizers say rallies and town hall meetings will be held along the march route. Those taking part are energized by the thought of making a difference.
" I saw the number of infection rates when it came down to women. It bothered me. I decided to get up and do something," said Valencia Robinson, event organizer.
This march is just one arm of a much larger effort to take a stand against AIDS across the country. In Oxford Demonstrators will take part in a three-day rally in support of increased funding for AIDS research.
http://www.wlbt.com/...
"Ole Miss" proudly promotes how well integrated it is these days. African-American students are there to get a degree, and few talk about or even think about whose footsteps opened the doors for them. But Assistant Provost Don Cole, who was one of the black students who followed in Meredith's footsteps in 1969 has not forgotten.
When Cole was a student here, he often wondered whether he should cheer for the opponent. Whenever Ole Miss scored, white students would pelt Cole and his black classmates with debris. Bottles. Trash. Popcorn.
He had enrolled seven years after Meredith, in 1969, and he was unprepared. Cole thought of integration as a substance that had been bottled up and sprayed throughout the campus, "filling the entire volume." Nobody corrected him.
Overt racism confronted him on every sidewalk. White students blocked his path. Some bumped him — hard. Young women marched right up and waved tiny Confederate flags in his face.
"That defined the Rebel flag," he says, "defined it as something not nice, something unwelcoming."
His role as an accidental martyr took shape his sophomore year. He and several classmates formed a black student union and strode to the Lyceum with a list of grievances. Among them: For Ole Miss to disassociate itself with the Confederate flag and to treat the roughly 100 black students on campus with some modicum of respect. The administration, he says, dismissed these as "demands."
http://www.commercialappeal.com/...
I hope that the upcoming debate will focus the attention of our country on the history of both Ole Miss, and of Mississippi. Of how far we have come and how far we still have to go.
On August 30, 2007, a report by the United States Census Bureau indicated that Mississippi was the poorest state in the country. Many white cotton farmers in the Delta have large, mechanized plantations, some of which receive extensive Federal subsidies, yet many African Americans still live as poor, rural, landless laborers. Of $1.2 billion from 2002-2005 in Federal subsidies to farmers in the Bolivar County area of the Delta, only 5% went to small farmers. There has been little money apportioned for rural development. Small towns are struggling. More than 100,000 people, mostly African American, have left the region in search of work elsewhere. The state had a median household income of $34,473.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
So Barack Obama, born in 1961, the same year that James Meredith applied to Ole Miss, will stride onto the stage there; the son of parents who would not have been allowed to marry in that state; to face John McCain, the great grandson of slaveholders.
Our country, "Ole Miss" and Mississippi have been faced with a challenge, and the final days of this election campaign will provide an answer. Will the Mississippi of the past still reign supreme, or have we finally, as Americans, developed the ability to accept the past and move forward into the future?
I say, and I pray - Yes We Can.