Ole Miss may need a new school motto

One of the weirder under reported stories of election night concerned the mini riot on the campus of Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) in Oxford, MS. Upon realizing that a new American demographic, representing a dwindling white majority, re-elected the first African American president, 400 students poured into Oxford streets shouting racial slurs directed at the President and burned Obama campaign signs.

As riots go this one was quite tame - no one was hurt and only two men were arrested for disorderly conduct. It did however, give pause to the notion that we've eliminated public expressions of intolerance for African Americans. It also conjured up memories of the worst university riot in American history, which occurred at the same Ole Miss campus just over fifty years ago on September 30, 1962. The cause then was the admittance of the first black, James Meredith, to the most segregated university in the most segregated state. That one was a duesy - 3,000 rioters consisting of Ole Miss students, joined by town folk and KKK groups from Texas to Florida fought hundreds of US Marshals with bricks, bottles, guns and homemade bombs. Two were shot to death and hundreds injured including 60 US Marshals, prompting President Kennedy to deploy 20,000 US Army soldiers from nearby Memphis to restore order.

I don't know what the Ole Miss school motto is, but maybe it should be changed to: "Ole Miss: where education is still a riot".

Also published in USA Today, November 16, 2012