Valerie Ross, assistant dean of students for multi-racial affairs, spoke to a room full at the "Ole Miss after the Crisis" presentation that was held Thursday. 

Caroline Stroud

JOUR 271

“Ole Miss After the Crisis”

October 4, 2012

485

OXFORD, MS.---------------A group of influential Ole Miss administrators spoke in the Overby auditorium this Thursday on their thoughts of James Meredith and the progress the University of Mississippi has made since being integrated in 1962.

            Doctor David Sansing started the “Ole Miss After the Crisis” presentation by introducing the speakers Gerald Walton, Donald Cole and Valerie Ross.

            Doctor Gerald Walton attained his PHD at the University and has not left since. Walton was very involved with getting African American students to come to Ole Miss after the university was integrated.  In 1963 Walton got wind of Cleveland Donald, a 17 year old freshman at Tugaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi who was interested in attending Ole Miss. Donald however, was nervous to apply for Ole Miss due to the rumors that his safety could be in danger, but with Walton’s reassuring words Cleveland Donald came to Ole Miss and became the second African American student to graduate from the university; and later helped with the Black Studies Program. 

Walton goes on to speak about the different ways he was involved with keeping the integration progress moving, before he concludes his part of the presentation he said this, “Sometimes we had to make decisions that weren’t popular, true we have a lot of guilt, but the best we can do is to continue to build on the progress we have made.”

            Doctor Donald Cole was next to speak; he entered the university in 1968 not knowing that Ole Miss was freshly integrated.  Cole protested for more African American faculty members and integrated sports, which got him expelled from the university in 1970.  In 1971 the football team became integrated and in 1973 the first black fraternity’s and sorority’s came to campus. Finally in 1977 Cole was allowed back onto campus and he received his PHD.

“The University always attracted good students with promise,” said Cole after boosting on all the African American leaders in-between 1990 and today.

Finishing the presentation was Valerie Ross a Luscious William Senior award winner and the universities assistant dean of students for multi-cultural affairs. Ross spoke on the more present Ole Miss.

“After 22 years the campus community has never been more attractive than it is today,” said Ross; she thinks the changes are greatly owed to good leadership.

Ross talked about the improvements students have made and how the university has become more and more like home to African American students.  The one thing Ross wants more of is an involved African American alumna. 

Right when people were getting up to leave a man stood up and told what James Meredith had said to him recently,

“Number one James is gratified on how the students are inspired by him, number two he is gratified how his classmates now apologize and shake his hand, and number three he is all about the future.”