I was on campus late Tuesday night – so late that the only person I saw during my walk from Bishop Hall to the Ford Center was a custodial worker locking the doors of the Student Union. I deliberately visited James Meredith’s statue on my walk over. I stood by, pondering the incident and the protest events that have transpired since. Something caught my attention as I was reading the plaque at the foot of the statue: a whipping noise echoing off the side of Brevard Hall. I curiously walked around the Lyceum. When I saw it, I shuddered.
How can we solemnly and fully condemn a couple students for hanging a Confederate flag on the statue when fewer than a hundred yards away, we fly that same flag every single day? How can we publicly denounce acts that violate the university’s creed of respect and dignity and willingly stand by and subject our peers to a flag face that has caused so much strife on our campus and in our state?
The current Mississippi state flag bearing the Confederate “stars and bars” has to go. As students at the flagship institution of the Magnolia State, we have more than just an opportunity to take this stance – we have the absolute responsibility to. It will not start with the administration. It starts with us, the student body at Ole Miss. This is not merely a column – this is a call to action.
We have a race problem. We deal with not-so-isolated incidents as they come, it seems, and we will continue to do so. But we have an obligation to consider what we can do right now to help alleviate some of the problems.
Mississippi was close in 2001. Lawmakers chose to let the citizens vote, and a replacement state flag was conceptualized. The vote was hardly close and Mississippi citizens chose to keep the current flag.
That vote, which occurred nearly 13 years ago, is the barrier that many people still hide behind today, and we need to break down those barriers with all the firepower we have.
If we have a problem with placing a Confederate flag on a black man’s statue, we should have a problem with letting black students walk by a similar flag in the Circle every day. We should also take offense at the few Confederate flags still hanging in dorm and fraternity house windows.
Thirteen years is a long time. In the past decade, Mississippi leaders have seemingly focused on making amends for the state’s unfortunate and vast racial history. In 2011, we created the Mississippi Freedom Trail, a cultural initiative to commemorate the state’s Civil Rights heritage. In 2005, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood relentlessly prosecuted former Ku Klux Klan organizer Edgar Ray Killen for the murders of three Civil Rights workers in 1964.
The University of Mississippi has made its fair share of progressive moves, as well. Both the Colonel Reb on-field mascot and “Colonel Reb” homecoming personality election title have been removed. The song “From Dixie With Love,” a morphed arrangement of the songs “Dixie” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” that the Pride of the South Marching Band played during athletic events, was banned in 2009. Perhaps the most pertinent university move to race relations in the state of Mississippi was the banning of Confederate flags at athletic events.
Let’s add to that list.
We are the state’s future leaders. With that responsibility comes the responsibility for progression. To make progress, we must accept the duty to take an objective look at our past to determine what can be done to better our future.
For a better future, we have to spearhead this change. Start petitions. Email the administration. Write your state and national Congressmen. Sure, it’s a small battle in a large war, but we have to start somewhere.
Can we really afford to sit back and wait? We all know that answer.
Let’s do this for Ole Miss and Mississippi.
Adam Ganucheau is a senior journalism major from Hazlehurst.
