“Mississippi’s not a state; it’s a club.” This saying, once common among white Mississippians of an older generation, aptly describes, for better and for worse, the most “Southern” of states…. Today this “clubbiness” of Mississippi often transcends race and sometimes even class, especially for expatriates, but in the first half of the twentieth century the […]

On Saturday, September 29, Ole Miss met the University of Kentucky in a football game played in Jackson. Before the game began, Ole Miss students had displayed what was billed as “the largest Confederate flag in the world.” At halftime, Ole Miss was ahead 7-0, and hysteria was reaching a new peak. When the crowd […]

Late in the evening of September 30, 1962, the Rev. Duncan M. Gray, Jr. mounted the base of the Confederate monument on the campus of the University of Mississippi. A slight, balding man in glasses, he shouted to be heard above the din. “General! General! Speak to these students! You can persuade them! Tell them […]