Ole Miss moves Confederate statue from prominent campus spot

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press
Updated 5:45 pm CDT, Tuesday, July 14, 2020

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Confederate monument that’s long been a divisive symbol at the University of Mississippi was removed Tuesday from a prominent spot on the Oxford campus, just two weeks after Mississippi surrendered the last state flag in the U.S. with the Confederate battle emblem.

The marble statue of a saluting Confederate soldier was taken to a Civil War cemetery in a secluded area of campus. Students and faculty have pushed the university for years to move the statue, but they have said in recent weeks that their work was being undermined by administrators' plan to beautify the cemetery — a plan that critics said could create a Confederate shrine.

. . .

The University of Mississippi was founded in 1848, and the statue of the soldier was put up in 1906 — one of many Confederate monuments erected across the South more than a century ago.

Critics say the statue's location near the university’s main administrative building has sent a signal that Ole Miss glorifies the Confederacy and glosses over the South’s history of slavery.



Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/article/Confederate-statue-being-moved-at-University-of-15407170.php#item-85307-tbla-2

[lynintenn]

1. They are still called the Ole Miss Rebels

Even though they changed their mascot name to Bears.

[NCjack]

3. How about the "New Miss Yankees"? Nawh -- that's not going to work. Two of those

words just ruin it.

[TomSlick]

2. Moving the statute to the cemetery is appropriate.

The cemetery was the burial place for confederate and union soldiers who died in hospitals operated in University buildings after the battle of Shiloh. The union dead were moved to national cemeteries after the war. The cemetery was not created as a shrine but as a necessity resulting from the number of dead. After the headstones were taken down (supposedly by grounds keepers making it easier to mow), the names were copied from the displaced headstones to a single large marker. The cemetery is a rather modest affair and an interesting historical oddity. The dead should be allowed to lie.

The published plans under consideration would create an obvious confederate shrine. The University should tread carefully. It was not long ago that the University retired "Colonel Reb" as the official mascot and banned the confederate battle flag from games.

The nickname "Ole Miss" has nothing to do with Mississippi. The ole Miss was the wife of the owner of a plantation.

[Progressive Jones]

4. All evidence of the Confederacy needs to be removed from US soil.

Americans do not worship traitors and enemies.