Tension at ‘Ole Miss’

Press, 7 May 1983, Page 19

Tension at ‘Ole Miss’

From

MICHAEL ACOCA

in New Orleans

Tension between white and black students continues to simmer at the University of Mississippi in a bitter dispute over display of the Confederate flag at sports meetings and other school functions. The flag has long been a symbol of white supremacy and traditional Southern values. To prevent possible violence at “Ole Miss,” which was forced to admit its first black student at bayonet point 20, years ago, the university chancellor has announced that the red, white, and blue “Stars and Bars” of the 11 Southern states which rebelled against the Union to preserve slavery would no longer be the school’s pennant. , , However, he.ruled that students were individually free to display it whenever .and, wherever they wished because he could not interfere with “freedom of expres-

That failed to satisfy black students who complained it did not go far enough, but the decision was hailed by white students who cheered and waved the Rebel flag. There are only 746 blacks among the university’s 9412 students. At a heated press conference the chancellor, Porter Fortune, admitted that “many see the flag as a vestige of an earlier and troubled era" but insisted he could not ban the use and display of the flag by individuals. Fortune also said that other Confederate symbols used by the school, such as the Colonel Rebel mascot, and the song “Dixie” would remain. “Dixie,” he said, “belongs to the people.” Last month, hundreds of white students singing “Dixie” and “Save the Flag” marched to a black fraternity houaP'where they were

confronted by police. There was no violence. The next night almost half the school’s black students gathered on the campus to sing “We Shall Overcome,” the song of civil rights marches in the 19605, and to say the Lord’s Prayer in a peaceful protest against “racist Ol*e Miss” symbols. Outside the Oxford, Mississippi, campus, the scene of racial violence 20 years ago, members of the Ku Klux Klan, wearing their white hooded robes and waving the Confederate flag, marched in support of the white students. The “Stars and Bars” is always prominent at Klan gatherings. The dispute began last autumn when the university’s first black cheerleader refused to carry the flag during a sporting event. Copyright — London Observer Service. ?