Ole Miss moves Confederate statue from prominent campus location
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.
A draft plan by the university indicated that the burial ground will have a lighted pathway to the statue. It also said headstones might be added to Confederate soldiers’ graves that have been unmarked for decades. Ole Miss Chancellor Glenn Boyce said Tuesday that the plan for headstones was being abandoned. Boyce said a recent survey with ground-penetrating radar showed that bodies are buried close to the surface.
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.
The state College Board on June 18 approved a plan to move the monument. The decision happened amid widespread debate over Confederate symbols as people across the U.S. and in other countries loudly marched through the streets to protest racism and police violence against African Americans.
The statue at Ole Miss was a gathering point in 1962 for people who rioted to oppose court-ordered integration of the university.
In February 2019, a rally by outside pro-Confederate groups at the monument prompted Ole Miss basketball players to kneel in protest during the national anthem at a game later that day. Student government leaders voted two weeks later for a resolution asking administrators to move the monument to the cemetery, where Confederate soldiers killed at the Battle of Shiloh are buried.