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Following George Floyd’s death, disputes over statues and building names are becoming more frequent in cities, colleges, and even the US Capitol. A battle is raging at the University of Mississippi about its very identity.
The state’s flagship campus in Oxford, like other universities, is not commonly referred to by its full name. It has been known as Ole Miss for over a hundred years. It sounds like Old Mississippi in folksy shorthand.
The true genesis of the word is more disturbing. A council supported by fraternities requested students to choose the name of the new school yearbook in 1896. Elma Meek, a student, suggested Ole Miss.
According to Meek’s 1937 statement to the campus press, she took it from the antebellum “darkey,” who used it as a term of respect for the slave master’s wife.
The headline read, “Ole Miss draws its name from darky dialect, not abbreviation of state,” and explained how the phrase came to be considered “the prized possession” of the university as a whole.
According to many students and alumni, the name has come to represent everything admirable about the northwest Mississippi institution and its customs. Many Black students, who comprise 12.5% of the student body in a state where African Americans make up three times that amount, are among those who point to
