A university and social change

I spent much of the Labor Day Weekend reading an interesting book about the university from which I graduated, the University of Mississippi, or "Ole Miss," class of 1982. Cohodas in "The Band Played Dixie: Race and the Liberal Conscience at Ole Miss" chronicles the university's history from1848 to 1997.

Those were turbulent times for the school, for the south, and for our nation. Those days and events which included Grant's near decision to destroy the buildings to the furor behind James Meredith's admission to the flag to "Dixie" and other issues run parallel to the history of the Black farmer in the south. From the plantation era to the Civil War to reconstruction to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 to now, the course of time marched by with the US, the south, Mississippi, and Ole Miss in the middle of it all.

Many of those early students at the university came from farming families. They knew well the difficulties of negotiating the Jim Crow era. For some of them, attending Ole Miss was a privilege, and for some it was an obligation. For some it was about making changes in the world, one campus, one protest, one lunch in the cafeteria, one class, one injustice experienced, one graduation at a time.

ACC and LCC got shout-outs in it as did Gerald Turner and Rob Evans, both of whom were agents for change at the university.

I learned a lot about the school, some things I'm not proud of, and many things in recent years that I am very proud of.