Some Ole Miss History, or Sometimes the South Makes My Head Hurt

Last night I perused a condensed version of The University of Mississippi, A Sesquicentennial History by David G. Sansing given to me by Dr. Mullins. (Before I go on with a real commentary, I must say that I had never seen sesquicentennial used seriously before.) It’s an insightful account of Ole Miss, and a helpful one for a Northerner like me.
To preface my reaction to the text itself, I would say why it was helpful for me: I struggle altogether to understand the South. I have no doubt that my struggle comes from my life in the North. The root of the problem is in fact black and white (and by that I mean it’s plain to see).

• I grew up in a hole of racial uniformity.
• I learned in history and social studies classes that the American Civil Rights Movement ceased to move because it had won against the bigotry of our past. (Whether my teachers really taught me that is irrelevant, and I hold nothing against them for what my possibly faulty memory recalls.)
• St. John’s College has, if it stretches as hard as it can, 8% minority students, which includes white Europeans I’m sure.
• I’ve spent my last two years reading books by dead white guys, many of whom are by today’s standards considered to be bigoted, often sexist, some racist if they even mention non-white peoples at all. (Now, I don’t agree with that judgment against the College’s Great Books, but I do see how I have failed to expose myself to the critical issues specific to the American South.)

So these are the contributors to my problem of understanding, which has caused a notably awkward couple of weeks for me here at Ole Miss, where I have been bombarded with information about, for example, segregation, which I thought did not and could not exist in the United States.
History, it seems, is a mediator between ignorance and present reality. The overview of my perusal of the Sesquicentennial History will point to what helped to sooth the ache of ignorance in my soul. Here are some key points:

• The War Between the States. The University was really founded in 1848 as a bastion of southern pride, whispering “the last enchantments of an earlier age.” Its founders hoped it could compete with schools in the North, so that white Southerners didn’t have to send their sons to other States that had foreign, insidious ideas about southern culture. When the War broke out a few decades later, the valuable programs it had established were diminished greatly, since many (or all?) of its students enlisted in the Confederate Army and left the campus. Then-Chancellor Frederick Barnard commented on his deserted campus, “Our university has ceased to have visible existence. We are inhabitants of a solitude.” But the War ended, and the students and faculty returned and “occupied the solitude.” After that Ole Miss grew greatly, and it kept with its strong affections for the Old South and those who fought in the War. A significant part of the culture was that the former students had fought for the preservation of a bygone way of life, as if the dignified voices from the Golden Age had still echoed among its white columns and verandas.
• Sports. Now, I understand that college football is an important thing for Southerners, but I hadn’t realized how much of an impact it had on the University’s struggle throughout the Civil Rights Movement. The legendary football coach John Vaught thought that the excellent performance of his team saved Ole Miss during “the Meredith Crisis.” Perhaps indeed it was the love of the game that prevented Ross Barnett, then-Governor of Mississippi, from closing the school in 1962, since that year the team went undefeated, produced two All-Americans, won the SEC championship, and beat Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl; if not his love for the team, then at least the undying adoration of the Ole Miss alumni, who petitioned constantly, kept the University open.
• “The Meredith Crisis.” What more can be said about James Meredith’s story at Ole Miss? About two hundred feet from where I type out this post is a statue of him walking through a gate labeled COURAGE, KNOWLEDGE, OPPORTUNITY, and PERSEVERANCE. It’s a checkered story. Obviously, the resistance posed to his admission and the need for the Federal Government’s intervention is a notable scar on the University’s image. The real culture of the University, however, has suffered from a negative portrayal of that time. In defense of the Ole Miss alumni Sansing writes,

  Some students did riot on the eve of Meredith’s admission, but the president of the student body and the elected editor of the campus newspaper condemned their actions. Some students did harass Meredith, but others befriended him. More than sixty Ole Miss faculty and staff put their livelihoods at risk when they publicly defended the federal marshals against the charge that they had caused the riot.

  With the drastic changes that cut through the campus in the decades to follow Meredith’s graduation, the University dissociated itself from the Confederate flag and changed its official mascot, which had been Colonel Rebel. The symbols connecting it to a bygone era, while not forgotten, are no longer seen as the real face of Ole Miss. Chancellor Khayat is quoted as saying, “The enduring symbols of Ole Miss are the lives of its graduates and the mark they make in the world,” instead of the faded allusions to lost world.

This is only coming from a brief and condensed, and somewhat apologetic, history of Ole Miss. But I find it compelling me to think about the South in general: how it sees its own past, how difficult it is for some of its people to see a future so different from that past, how much some have fought to make the future different. As I come up against a barrage of “new” information about the current struggles in Mississippi, the stress of it is eased a bit to know some of this State’s past. To know where it has come from is necessary to know where it is going. If I look at the South as a static dot on a map, I could despair at its condition. But if I see the line of its progress, I am encouraged when I extrapolate the possibilities of its next years; what seems bleak and harsh is suddenly transformed into a bright view of a new era.