James Meredith speaks during an interview at the Willie Morris Public Library in Jackson Saturday. Photo: Thomas Graning, The Daily Mississippian.
James Meredith, whose statue on the University of Mississippi campus was desecrated Feb. 16 with a noose and a flag bearing the Confederate “Stars and Bars,” thinks the university is focusing too much on the incident and should keep it “strictly a University of Mississippi affair.”
“(University administrators) haven’t kept me updated on any of it, but they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t be making this an international crisis,” Meredith said in an interview with The Daily Mississippian on Saturday at the Willie Morris Public Library in Jackson.
The 80-year-old Ole Miss graduate offered solutions – two of which would be very visible.
“Remove the James Meredith idol at Ole Miss, and remove the statue of the Confederate soldier at the university,” he said. “If you move the Confederate statue, you end the Civil War. If you move the Meredith idol, that ends the black-white race thing.”
Meredith encourages students to not become discouraged by the hateful act. He referenced what he calls the “most-used photograph” when he integrated Ole Miss in 1962 – Meredith sitting alone in an empty classroom on his first day of class because the whites in the class walked out when he entered.
“I ended up ahead of everyone else in my class on that very first day because I was the only one that heard what the teacher taught that day, and it was pure foolishness on their part,” he said. “If students at Ole Miss are focusing on (the statue desecration) right now more than their studies, that’s the real tragedy here – not what those teenagers did.”
Meredith also believes that Mississippi and Ole Miss are being unfairly targeted. He said he was shocked when he spoke to students in Alabama and Tennessee after his book, “A Mission From God,” was published last year.
“They thought they were so much better than Mississippi,” he said. “That’s nothing but total foolishness. There aren’t 10 ounces of differences between the racial situation in Mississippi than in all 49 other states.”
As for the noose hanging around the neck of his statue, Meredith is not intimidated by the symbol.
“How could the noose be anything other than an emotional distraction?” he asked. “There hasn’t been a lynching in Mississippi since 1958. It’s time for Mississippi to start ignoring these emotional distractions and move forward.”
Meredith thinks both the university and the state are ready to move forward.
“We’ve got a lot to do,” he said. “Since I was really young, the most devastating thing to me when I traveled the country and the world was that Mississippi was so negatively perceived. I always wanted to be from the best, not the worst. I think of any other place in the world, Mississippi is ready to do things differently than what we’ve been doing.”
As for the incident that has generated so much media attention, Meredith said, “Quite frankly, I have 100 percent confidence in the rules, regulations and procedures at the university. I have that same and full confidence in the officials, even the board of trustees and the state legislature. So I’d have to know more than I know to have any reason to not trust and believe in these people.”
— Adam Ganucheau
dmeditor@gmail.com
