An Eventful Day

Today Mr. Big Food and I traveled to Oxfordtown and TSUN.* Miss M and Mike joined us. 

There was an EVENT on campus.

We were not there for the EVENT, and that's what I told the security guard who was guarding Visitor Parking Street, but he let us park in EVENT PARKING anyway. 

As per usual when we visit TSUN, we walked across the Grove headed for the Union and a cup of bitter coffee. As we were walking, I mentioned to Miss M that 50 years ago James Meredith became a student at Ole Miss. We chatted about subsequent EVENTS.

An unpleasant turn of EVENTS.

We piled back into the truck, and headed to the Square for a cup of coffee. 

Statue on the Square memorializing "Our Confederate Dead."

Mr. Big Food and Mike did what they'd come to TSUN to do, and Miss M and I walked the Square marveling at the prices of shiny new things

and pieces of wood with semi-cleaver sayings. By the way, Ajax does list mac & cheese as a veggie (see below).

Some places on the Square seem not to be affected by EVENTS. Square Books, established in 1979.

We, with our friends from TSUN, wound up at Ajax for supper where I chatted with Neil about an article in The Mississippian.

James Meredith's account of EVENTS at Ole Miss in does not exactly square with the popular version.

Though many consider him a staple citizen in the civil rights movement, Meredith disagreed.

“Frankly, I had never heard of the ‘civil rights movement,’” Meredith said. “I had been nine years in the military, the last three years (before coming to Ole Miss) overseas. That wasn’t part of my reality.”

Instead, Meredith saw himself as “a servant of God on a specific mission of God,” which required him to restore the power and glory to his Choctaw bloodline. The reason for the bloodline’s end was rooted in arrogance and a “refusal to believe anybody was smarter than us,” according to Meredith.

Meredith believed the most effective way to achieve his family’s dream of bringing back the power that once was theirs was to put his foot in the door of higher education and learn from others something his ancestors failed to do.

“Our great shortcoming was our failure to appreciate and learn from others,” Meredith said. “If we were ever to become a real part of the Mississippi scene, we would have to know as much as other Mississippians. So that’s how I got involved.”

*TSUN: That School Up North.