Ole Miss Changing, But Still Too Slowly

Nearly a decade ago, I took my first and only trip to the center of the Ole Miss campus in Oxford, Miss., and I lived to tell about it.

It wasn't fun.

The place is called The Grove, where tailgaters join others before Mississippi football games to hear a concert from The Pride of the South Marching Band. With various versions of "Dixie " blaring, Confederate flags waving and "yahoos" echoing through the willow oaks, the whole thing ranks among the most appalling things I've seen as a sports journalist who happens to be darker than a KKK hood.

Speaking of which, a small group of those 19th century-thinking people marched on the Ole Miss campus last Saturday before the LSU game. They were protesting the decision of university chancellor Dan Jones to bar the school band from spending time in The Grove and elsewhere playing "From Dixie with Love," a silly blend of the Union Army's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the Confederate Army's "Dixie." At the end of the medley, folks would yell, "The South shall rise again."

Thus Jones' ban -- which was good. Even better, those dozen or so KKK members were shouted down by around 250 hecklers of all races, religions and ages. What was expected to be a vicious rally by the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan evolved into a mostly nothing affair.

Still, here are some questions: Since the Ole Miss band played that Dixie stuff forever (and this particular medley for nearly 20 years), what took university officials so long to get a spine? And why do they continue to allow the nickname "Rebels" for their sports teams? And why would black players go to such a place?

Just the other day, Ole Miss football coach Houston Nutt told the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger that opposing coaches are using those Southern heritage things -- you know, the name given to those things by their loyal and backwards supporters -- to scare recruits away from the University of Mississippi.

Those things would scare me. Even so, Nutt told the newspaper that he hasn't witnessed a racial incident during his two seasons with the program, and that the majority of his players are black, and that his coaching staff is evenly split racially. His Rebels also are in the midst of an impressive season -- a rarity for Ole Miss during much of their past 40 year or so -- with an 8-3 record overall and 4-3 mark in the Southeastern Conference after victories over rivals Tennessee and LSU.

It's just that, even though the last one was a clunker, you always have the possibility of Klan uprisings, and you have the mindset of those still wishing to make the Confederate flag part of their game-day rituals. None of that is a pretty look for a famously intolerant university during the 1960s that helped give Mississippi a wretched name before and during the Civil Rights movement.
"Anything that anybody from the outside says about our past, we probably deserve. But I tell you what, our present and our future in the South, I feel very strongly about and particularly at Ole Miss, because of the students I've had the opportunity to work with."
-- Sparky Reardon,
Ole Miss vice chancellor for student affairs
"Anything that anybody from the outside says about our past, we probably deserve," Sparky Reardon told FanHouse this week. He is the Ole Miss vice chancellor for student affairs and the Class of 1972. "But I tell you what," Reardon said, "our present and our future in the South, I feel very strongly about and particularly at Ole Miss, because of the students I've had the opportunity to work with. And, you know, we have a group here that I think is probably unlike any other group in the country.

"It's called 'One Mississippi," and it's an ongoing dialogue about race of black and white students. They were the leaders in the protest and the counter-protest (against the Klan) on Saturday. As a native Mississippian (from Clarksdale), it just warms my heart to see that, because there was a period when there was a clash. And then there was a period when something happened, people would isolate. People would go to their own corner.

"Now what we're finding in Mississippi -- and specifically at Ole Miss -- when there is any type of contention or controversy, our students come together and talk about it, which I think is a wonderful laboratory for real life. Don't quit talking."

Talking is fine. Doing is better. So during the last dozen years or so, Ole Miss has attempted to join at least the 20th century.

It has been a clumsy journey for Ole Miss officials. In 1993, they stripped their plantation owner-looking mascot named Colonel Reb of his duties on the sidelines and at courtside of games. He nevertheless was free to roam The Grove, for instance. It took a while before they finally had the guts to ignore the considerable howling from the masses to kill the guy and then bury him.

Then, during the latter 1990s, former coach Tommy Tuberville begged Ole Miss fans to stop their eternal practice of waving Confederate flags during home football games. The results were mixed. As a result, Ole Miss officials were forced to react, but they took a cowardly approach. Instead of declaring a straight-out ban on Confederate flags, they banned the use of carrying sticks into the stadium, claiming the sticks on the end of flags and banners could be dangerous.

Whatever works, I guess. That ban was upheld by a couple of federal courts after a challenge by Mississippi 's usual suspects in white.

Just as impressive, Jones ended those "Dixie" songs after he said the chanting of "The South shall rise again" was unacceptable. More impressive, Jones only has been Ole Miss chancellor since July after serving as a doctor in private practice around his native Mississippi and as an administrator in the medical field. In other words, Jones wasn't around for the following: Three years ago, Ole Miss officials ended a decade of debate by placing a life-size bronze statue of the heroic James Meredith on campus within 100 feet of the ancient statute of a Confederate soldier. Meredith was the first black student admitted to Ole Miss in 1962 during a riot filled with gunfire.

During my trip to Ole Miss a decade ago, I visited the Lyceum Building that houses the Ole Miss administration, and I saw places in its old brick columns that featured bullet holes from the Meredith era. That was a riveting moment. In contrast, there were revolting moments when I reached The Grove.

I took my camcorder. So, just before I headed to these computer keys, I watched what I recorded back then to refresh my memory.

Despite the beauty of the tree-lined Ole Miss campus sparkling in the sun on an autumn afternoon, I saw the ugliness of those Confederate flag wavers, including youngsters in their signal digits. Once the Ole Miss band started its transition into its mournful version of "Dixie," I saw many remove their caps. I even saw a close up of an elderly gentleman standing nearby with tears in his eyes.

As the song picked up, I heard the "Yahoos" begin.

Then, out of the corner of the screen, I saw two men approaching with crooked smiles, and I remember how I tried to ignore them while I kept filming. I heard one of the men on the film saying something like, "You're getting a lot of good shots? What are you, let me see what you're doing." Then I heard the other man use a word that those real Colonel Rebs used to utter to their slaves.

That's when I decided back then to head to my version of the underground railroad called the Vaught-Hemingway Stadium pressbox.

Reardon said things have changed. He invited me to join him on a modern-day stroll through The Grove. He suggested the transformation of Ole Miss during the decade since I was last on campus is evident at The Grove as well as everywhere else.

"The chant will not come back. Colonel Rebel will not come back. Those things are in the past, but I just think that after we get finished with our bowl game, we'll probably all sit down and talk about where we're going to go next year," said Reardon, stressing Ole Miss' commitment to diversity and estimating that 25 percent of Ole Miss' undergraduate enrollment of 14,000 is black.

Added Reardon, "I just wish everybody had the vantage point that I have every day, to see young students -- African-Americans, international, Hispanics, who are sitting together and eating every day and talking and laughing and going to football games and hoddy todding together.

"Yet we have a few people who want to hold onto the vestiges of the past in the worst kind of way, and the university is not going to stand for that."

Sounds encouraging, but we'll see. Hopefully, we won't see anything close to what I just finished watching.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning," an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta.