with Dr. Kevin M. Kruse, Professor of History, Princeton University
As much as any institution of the Jim Crow South, “Ole Miss” stood as a symbolic bastion of white supremacy. The flagship university in the state most dedicated to segregation, it still seemed in the 1960s to be stuck in the 1860s. The school’s athletic teams were named the Rebels, Confederate flags loomed large on campus, and even the “Ole Miss” nickname bowed to the antebellum aristocracy. Not surprisingly, the drive to desegregate the school — initially waged on his own by a young veteran named James Meredith, but soon backed by NAACP lawyers and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division too — was met with fierce resistance. There were seemingly endless rounds of negotiation and confrontation between state and federal authorities over Meredith’s admission, but it all came to a head over the long night of September 30 – October 1, 1962, in what came to be known as “The Battle of Oxford.”
Where: SNF Agora Conference Room, Wyman N325F, and Zoom