"I think what we have here is really a confluence of two lines of history, where you have a new Ole Miss, a postracial Ole Miss, and you have a postracial black candidate running for president," said David Sansing, professor emeritus of history at the university. "Nowhere in America could these two forces reinforce each other as they do here at Ole Miss."
Barack Obama was a 14-month-old toddler in Hawaii when James Meredith, a 29-year-old Air Force veteran, broke the color barrier at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 1962.
Ole Miss chancellor Robert Khayat welcomes the Sept. 26 debate between Obama and John McCain as a chance to show the world an up-to-date image of the school. He recognizes that some people's only impression comes from grainy black-and-white footage from 46 years ago.
"It took a lot of years for the university to get beyond that. But we've done it," said Khayat.
About 20 percent of the school's 17,601 students this fall are racial minorities; most of the minorities are black, although the school says it doesn't track specific numbers.
In 2006, the university dedicated a life-size bronze statue of Meredith near a white-columned administration building that still bears bullet scars from 1962. The statue stands about 100 yards from a marble figure of a Confederate soldier, erected decades ago to honor students killed in the Civil War.
As on many Southern campuses, Ole Miss fraternities and sororities are still largely all-white or all-black. But it is common to see racially mixed groups socializing in the cafeteria.
Brittney Smith, president of the school's Black Student Union, said many students don't know about the integration fight that took place before some of their parents were born. She said university administrators deserve credit for helping to promote interaction among students.
Smith, 22, grew up in Oxford. She said that when she visits other colleges in Mississippi, black students sometimes ask her whether she is scared to attend Ole Miss.
"There's so many stereotypes about Ole Miss and I hate it," said Smith, a senior majoring in chemistry. "I love this school."
