Plans to put a plaque next to a prominent statue of a Confederate soldier at the University of Mississippi are being criticized by the university’s NAACP chapter, which says it should mention defense of slavery as the reason Mississippi seceded from the Union.
As currently planned, the Ole Miss plaque will note that the statue, built in 1906, is one of many memorials across the South put up during that period to honor aging Civil War veterans. It also will say that the statue was a rallying point in 1962 for a mob that gathered to oppose the admission of James Meredith to the school as its first black student.
If the university is to follow former chancellor Dan Jones’ recommendation that Ole Miss do more to tell the story of slavery, secession and segregation, it should consider including on the plaque that the national debate over slavery was the primary cause of secession and ultimately the Civil War.
For further context, it might add that most of the soldiers who fought for Mississippi did not own slaves.
Slavery happened. So did the Civil War and the civil rights movement.
Mississippi cannot avoid this history. Ole Miss should acknowledge that it all happened — while correctly pointing out that since then things have changed greatly for the better.
