Mississippi, with its rich and dramatic history, holds a special place in the civil rights movement. Perhaps no other institution in that state, or in the South as a whole, has been more of a battleground for race relations or a barometer for progress than the University of Mississippi. Even the school's affectionate nickname - Ole Miss - bespeaks its place in the legacy of the South: now used as short for Old Mississippi, "Ole Miss" was once a term of respect used by slaves for the wife of a plantation owner. Throughout the first part of this century, the state's "Boll Weevil" legislators presented the most implacable hostility to black enrollment. The campus itself - with its stately white columns and field of Confederate flags at sporting events - seemed almost frozen in time. With the civil rights movement and the arrival of the first black student in 1962, the quietly determined James Meredith, violence and hatred erupted with regularity on the verdant campus. Even following years of progress, when a young black man and young white woman were elected "Colonel Rebel" and "Miss Ole Miss, " the highest campus honors, the pair appeared in the traditional yearbook photograph separated by a picket fence, still suggesting old taboos. Once an unrepentant enclave of educational separatism in the South, the history of Ole Miss has paralleled the nation's own in race relations: the rocky beginnings of integration following Meredith's admission; the discord of the sixties and seventies, when activist black students eschewed crew cuts and varsity sweaters for Afros and clenched fists; to the delicate reconciliation of recent years. A drastically changed campus today, Ole Miss continues towrestle with its controversial mascot, "Colonel Rebel, " and questions of whether the emotional chords of "Dixie" should still be heard at its football games. The history of Ole Miss offers a detailed portrait of the uneasy yet cautiously optimistic ways in which American society contin
Nadine Cohodas is the author of several books, most recently Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington, which received an award for Excellence in Research in Recorded Jazz Music from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. She lives in Washington, D.C.
