Essay by Ronald J. Rychlak
I teach law at the University of Mississippi, in the heart of the Deep South. This campus was the scene of one of the great battles in the civil rights movement. In 1962, James Meredith became the first African-American student to enroll at the University, but only after a federal court order required the University to admit him. His enrollment led to two days of rioting that left two people dead, 375 injured, and forced President Kennedy to send 30,000 federal troops to Oxford, Mississippi. Other events from that same time period have permanently scarred Mississippi's reputation as it relates to race relations. Emmett Till, a black fourteen-year-old Chicagoan visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, was beaten, shot, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at or “talking smart” to a white woman. Medgar Evers, the state's first NAACP field secretary, was gunned down outside his home in Jackson. Three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, were buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi, for their efforts to register black voters.
These events remain etched in the nation's conscience. The recent movie Mississippi Burning depicted the murder of the civil rights workers near Philadelphia and returned the incident to the public's attention. In his recent hit song, We Didn't Start the Fire, Billy Joel mentioned important news events from his life. The simple statement “Ole Miss” was intended to stir thoughts of the violence surrounding James Meredith's enrollment at the University. Medgar Evers's murder is once again in the news, as efforts to bring his killer(s) to justice continue even today.
Despite this history, our students, alumni, and supporters, like those at every school, take great pride in the University. They are also proud of their southern heritage. When the Civil War broke out, every student and faculty member at the University of Mississippi withdrew or resigned to go fight for the South. The campus itself served as a hospital during the war. There is even a burial ground located on campus for 600 Confederate and Union soldiers who died here. With this history, it is not surprising that the University clings to symbols of the Old South. The campus is adorned with a statue of a Confederate soldier. The University's sports teams are known as the Rebels. The mascot, Colonel Rebel, is a caricature of an Old South plantation owner. At football games, the band celebrates the scoring of touchdowns by playing Dixie. Even the University's popular nickname, Ole Miss, is derived from an old slave term for the white female head of the plantation.
To many observers, this celebration of southern pride represents a continuation of the racial intolerance long associated with the South. This opinion is expressed with some regularity on campus. It is often met with the rejoinder that this is simply a matter of tradition, or school pride, or with the ad hominem argument that outsiders simply do not understand the South. Any suggestion that there is more racial discrimination in the South than elsewhere is rejected as a false assumption based on ancient history. Even that ancient history will sometimes be defended as having been distorted over time.
By embracing southern culture, along with all of its negative connotations, Mississippi in general, and the University in particular, has been accused of being racially insensitive. When other schools decided to boycott the Fiesta Bowl in January 1991 over the issue of Arizona's failure to enact a state holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., there was the possibility that the University's football team would be next in line for an invitation. As that possibility was being discussed on campus, it was learned that—because of perceived racial insensitivity at the University of Mississippi and the already volatile situation in Arizona—the Fiesta Bowl's selection committee would bypass the Rebels.
Every year there are several movements to improve race relations on campus. Some of these movements have been spectacularly successful. When a black student athlete was paralyzed in a 1989 football game against Vanderbilt, the University raised one million dollars to establish a trust fund to provide him with a house and medical care for the rest of his life. When the first black fraternity house on campus burned down, funds were quickly found to rebuild it. Recently, the faculty senate approved a motion calling for the immediate integration of sorority and fraternity houses or the withdrawal of University support. Still, racial problems persist. Within the past few years, pledges at a white fraternity “captured” one of the fraternity members, stripped him, wrote racial slurs on his body, then dropped him off at Rust College, a black institution about thirty miles from the University of Mississippi.
About the Author
Ronald J. Rychlak. Professor, The University of Mississippi School of Law; B.A., Wabash College; J.D., Vanderbilt University.
Citation
66 Tul. L. Rev. 1411 (1992)