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...African Americans now make up about 14% of the students at Ole Miss. Two recent student-body presidents were black, as is this year's chair of the alumni association. "The KKK, like most racism, is on the way out in Mississippi," says Brent Caldwell, president of the College Democrats at the university. "If [Klan members] come, both black and white students here at the university will protest," adds Black Students' Union president Brittany Smith. "This is not the same Ole Miss as it was 50 or 60 years ago." College Republicans president Tyler Craft agrees. "Is it perfect...
...Still, there are some cracks in this apparently united front. A quiet but frank minority of students at Ole Miss say racial tensions still exist. They point to the Confederate-soldier monument that stands just 100 yards from the statue saluting James Meredith, who led the 1962 integration of Ole Miss at age 29. (Meredith himself reportedly told a small group of student journalists that he was not permitted to speak at his own 2006 statue dedication; a University spokesman denies this, saying Meredith declined to speak of his own accord.) These students cite self-segregated fraternity houses, dorms, parties...
Susan Glisson, the executive director of Ole Miss's William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, notes that a smattering of groups working against racial strife have sprung up in recent years and that any viable candidate for student-body president must now include race reconciliation as part of his or her platform. Still, Glisson admits that racial tension "is a substantial problem...
Racial tension, of course, is not unique to Ole Miss - just this Tuesday an Obama effigy was found hanging from a tree at George Fox University in Oregon, accompanied by graffiti mentioning a scholarship program for minority and low-income students - and neither are self-segregated parties, frats, dorms or social gatherings. Many Ole Miss students, in fact, say their school comes under unfair scrutiny because of its past...
Barack Obama and John McCain have never debated each other, but both may whiff some déjà vu when they hold their first showdown tonight in Oxford, Miss. - they've likely spent days sparring with their opponent's spitting image...