Nobility Finally Triumphs Over Meanness at Ole Miss

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Nobility Finally Triumphs Over Meanness at Ole Miss
By Ralph Lynn

Dr. Ralph Lynn is a retired professor of history at Baylor University.

Before historians welcomed the blessing-curse of science in support of their craft in the late 19th century, people thought of history as "philosophy teaching by example."

Following this old-fashioned approach, we could learn from the recent history of the University of Mississippi-"Ole Miss" at Oxford-not to cling too long to an unworthy past.

Nadine Cohodas` 1997 book, The Band Played Dixie, tells the depressing but also encouraging story of the struggle of Mississippians to come to terms with the modern world ushered in when James Meredith broke the color barrier at Ole Miss in 1962.

On nearly every page the reader will find evidence that Willie Morris was correct in saying that in his native state "one could find at the same moment severity and tenderness, meanness and nobility." Morris also thinks of Mississippi as "beautiful, tragic, and bewitched."

Perhaps the most instructive example of more than one of these qualities is the story of an Ole Miss law student, David Clark.

He had grown up in a Jackson, Miss., family who were close friends with Gov. Ross Barnett, perhaps the most successful and most contemptible racist demagogue in a time and place in which he had much competition. Barnett had taught David Clark`s boyhood Sunday school class.

An Ole Miss law professor invited Aaron Henry, head of the state NAACP, to address a class-and had made attendance mandatory. Clark wanted to hear the speaker but simply could not put himself in a position in which a black man would be his superior.

Sat in Hall

So, the professor allowed Clark to sit in the hall at a slightly open classroom door. The professor arranged to relay Clark`s questions to the speaker and the speaker`s answers to the tragically bewitched youth in the hall.

All very tender and all very sad in a vain attempt to hang onto an intolerably flawed past.

Some Oxford clergymen demonstrated a degree of tenderness, courage, and nobility when they ignored popular protests to lead a "day of repentance" in the tumultuous time of Meredith`s enrollment when the city was, quite literally, an active war zone.

But a university administrator who sought guidance at this time from his Methodist bishop "came away discouraged" from his audience. After detailing the problems he faced, the schoolman hoped for a positive reply. "Instead, the bishop simply said, `Chancellor, you do have a problem.`"

Perhaps the most disturbing example of official severity and unadulterated meanness is the story of a senior honors black student, Linnie Liggins. She was not a member of the Black Student Union. But when the university authorities had the members arrested after a demonstration, Linnie Liggins, quite voluntarily, suffered arrest and imprisonment with them because she thought their cause was just.

The university allowed her "to finish her course work and participate in an honors convocation where she received an award as an outstanding French student, but she was not permitted to attend her graduation."" She was the first in her family to get a college degree. Members of her family had traveled hundreds of miles to see her walk across the stage. "But the university refused to relent."

The passage of 25 years brought the kind of change Mississippians can be proud of. Only then did nobility and beauty triumph over bewitchery and meanness. Then, the university arranged a program to bring black graduates back to the campus for a celebration climaxed with an elaborate banquet at which blacks and whites sat down together as equals.

Only then did Linnie Liggins go back to the campus although she had returned many times to Oxford for visits with her family.

The band had played Dixie too long.