History of the University of Mississippi
[4] In 1854, the university established the fourth state-supported, public law school in the United States, and also began offering engineering education.
[5] Early president Frederick A. P. Barnard sought to increase the stature of the university, placing him in conflict with the trustees.
[7] Barnard's northern background—he was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Yale—and Union sympathies resulted in heightened tensions: a student assaulted his slave and the state legislature investigated him.
[6] Following the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Mississippi became the second state to secede, with the articles of secession drafted by the university's mathematics professor Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar.
Although Kansas troops destroyed much of the medical equipment, a lone remaining professor persuaded Grant against burning the campus.
[12] To avoid rejecting veterans, the university lowered admission standards and decreased cost by eliminating tuition and allowing students to live off-campus and prepare their own meals.
[3] In 1885, the University of Mississippi became the first college in the Southeast to hire a female faculty member, Sarah McGehee Isom.
A contest was held to solicit suggestions for a yearbook title from the student body, and Elma Meek submitted the winning entry.
Interviewed by the student newspaper, The Mississippian, in 1939, Meek stated: "I had often heard old 'darkies' on Southern plantations address the lady in the 'big house' as 'Ole Miss'... the name appealed to me, so I suggested it to the committee and they adopted it.
Alternative theories include that the nickname originated from a diminutive of "old Mississippi",[18][19][20] or, less likely, the "Ole Miss" train that ran from Memphis to New Orleans.
In that era, the university provided two-year pre-clinical education certificates, and graduates went out of state to complete doctor of medicine degrees.
[25] During the 1930s, Mississippi Governor Theodore G. Bilbo was politically hostile towards the university, firing administrators and faculty and replacing them with his friends.
Chancellor Alfred Hume gave the state legislators a grand tour of Ole Miss and the surrounding historic city of Oxford, persuading them to keep it in its original setting.
[28] Eight years after the Brown decision, every Mississippi school district remained segregated, and all attempts by African American applicants to integrate the university had failed.
[29][30] Shortly after the 1961 inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, James Meredith—an African American who had served in the Air Force and completed coursework at Jackson State University—applied to Ole Miss.
[36][37] Two civilians were killed by gunfire during the riot, French journalist Paul Guihard and Oxford repairman Ray Gunter.
[38][39] Eventually, 3,000 United States Army and federalized Mississippi National Guard troops quickly arrived in Oxford that helped quell the riot and brought the situation under control.
[3] In 2002, the university marked the 40th anniversary of integration with a yearlong series of events titled "Open Doors: Building on 40 Years of Opportunity in Higher Education."
These included an oral history of Ole Miss, various symposiums, the April unveiling of a $130,000 memorial, and a reunion of federal marshals who had served at the campus.
