New Miss?

The first presidential debate will be held at the campus of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). The above New York Times article notes the changes, and continuity, in race relations at the state's flagship university, where people sometimes still fly the Confederate battle flag and sing "Dixie" at football games. Ole Miss was the site of a seminal event in the bloody history of integration which has been described as the largest armed conflict on US soil since the Civil War: a massive protest turned violent riot against the admission of James Meredith to his home-state university in 1962. Meredith was denied admission, filed suit, and won his case in the Supreme Court, clearing his entry. The historian Taylor Branch has a chapter in his Parting the Waters about this amazing episode, which involved lengthy negotiations between President John Kennedy, his brother Robert the attorney general, and Mississippi governor Ross Barnett, who fought Meredith's presence by every means he could muster.

Meredith's registration was protected by about 200 US Marshals, federal prison guards, and border patrolmen, armed only with sidearms, facing off against (by some estimates) ten thousand angry whites, many well-armed, who descended on the campus from around the country. Before it was over 160 marshals were wounded, 28 by gunfire; one man was killed by a stray bullet and another man, a British reporter, was shot in the back and killed. The battle only ended when federal troops arrived. Check out this site:

http://afroamhistory.about.com/cs/jamesmeredith/a/jamesmeredith.htm

On Friday an African-American candidate for president will participate in a debate on this same campus.