The plaque dedicating Silver Pond, seen in 2011, is currently missing. DM File Photo
The plaque designating Silver Pond behind the Residential Colleges on campus has gone missing.
Retired Ole Miss law school Associate Professor Barbara Phillips noticed the plaque was missing last week.
No report has been filed to the University Police Department, and it is unclear exactly how long the plaque has been missing.
The plaque was unveiled on Sept. 29, 2011 in a ceremony honoring author, historian and former Ole Miss History Department Chair James Silver.
“Legacies such as (Silver’s) deserve to live on,” junior public policy major Abby Trimble said. “I hope the plaque will be returned safely and unharmed soon.”
Silver attended the University of North Carolina and Peabody College before earning his doctorate at Vanderbilt University. He then began teaching at The University of Mississippi where he served as chair of the history department from 1946 to 1957.
Silver criticized the state’s perspective on racial equality and compared it to the Civil War period. In 1964, his book “Mississippi: The Closed Society” was published, defining the state as closed to freedom of inquiry. He befriended and was an advocate for James Meredith.
Phillips said the dedication of Silver Pond represents a decades-long overdue recognition of the shameful treatment of James Silver and a declaration that the university aspires to live up to the very qualities exhibited by Silver himself.
“He fought for academic freedom and opposed the interference of the state legislature,” Phillips said. “His impeccable scholarship challenged the mythology of the segregationist South, and he was a highly regarded historian.”
Chairman of the Silver Commemorative Committee and previous UM law Professor John Robin Bradley spoke on Silver’s behalf in 2011, prior to the Silver ceremony in which the plaque was revealed.
“His sterling legacy was that he challenged students and the public to think beyond their prior experience to a broad range of ideas, even controversial ones,” Bradley said at the ceremony.
