Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
Administration

Removing Confederate Symbols Is a Step, but Changing a Campus Culture Can Take Years

By Katherine Mangan June 25, 2015
The U. of Mississippi has been striving to shift from its Confederate past, shedding traditions like waving the rebel flag at football games (as seen at a game in 1995) while taking steps to improve and celebrate its diversity. The institution’s successes and occasional setbacks highlight the difficulty of the task.
The U. of Mississippi has been striving to shift from its Confederate past, shedding traditions like waving the rebel flag at football games (as seen at a game in 1995) while taking steps to improve and celebrate its diversity. The institution’s successes and occasional setbacks highlight the difficulty of the task.AP Photo/Tannen Maury

It’s hard for Charles K. Ross to shake his first image of the University of Mississippi. He was watching a televised football game, and the Ole Miss stadium was a sea of Confederate-flag-waving fans.

Mr. Ross, who was completing a doctorate on African-Americans in sports at Ohio State University, was appalled.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

It’s hard for Charles K. Ross to shake his first image of the University of Mississippi. He was watching a televised football game, and the Ole Miss stadium was a sea of Confederate-flag-waving fans.

Mr. Ross, who was completing a doctorate on African-Americans in sports at Ohio State University, was appalled.

“To see that many flags waving — it felt like very hostile territory,” he recalls.

That was in 1994, two years before he took a job at the university, where he is now an associate professor of history and director of the program in African-American studies.

Today, when he walks across the campus, the signs he sees are far more welcoming.

The statue of a Confederate soldier still stands at a prominent circle, but now, nearby, there’s also a bronze likeness of James H. Meredith, the university’s first black student. Mr. Meredith was admitted by federal order amid rioting that left two people dead.

Waving the Confederate flag has died off at football games, and the Colonel Reb mascot, the white-haired old man who bore a striking resemblance to a plantation owner, has been retired. Confederate Drive is now Chapel Lane, and another street was renamed for a beloved black football player who was paralyzed in a game and later died.

Mr. Ross’s email address, with its @olemiss.edu tag, still stings because of its ties to the antebellum past, but over all, he believes, the symbols and signs that have become flashpoints in a national conversation today are starting to point in a more positive direction on his campus.

Distancing itself from its Confederate past has been a long, painful, and continuing struggle for Ole Miss.

Perceptions of the historic campus, in Oxford, Miss., before and after the changes provide a glimpse at how statues, symbols, and relics of the past can affect a college’s racial climate. The setbacks the university has experienced along the way — like the noose that appeared one day on the statue of Mr. Meredith — illustrate the limits of what can be accomplished by erecting a new monument or banning a tradition.

ADVERTISEMENT

It’s a debate that gained greater urgency on many Southern campuses with last week’s murders of nine people in a historic black church in Charleston, S.C.

Photographs of the alleged killer posing with Confederate flags have helped persuade politicians across the Deep South, including South Carolina’s governor, Nikki R. Haley, to call for the flags’ removal from state grounds.

In Mississippi the university’s acting chancellor, Morris H. Stocks, added his voice on Tuesday to those calling for removing the Confederate emblem from the state flag. The university long ago decided that that image didn’t reflect the institution’s values, he said.

The Power of Symbols

In 1996, when enrollment was suffering, the university’s chancellor at the time, Robert C. Khayat, commissioned a study of public perceptions about the university, including the Confederate flag and other symbols of the Old South. He found that the racially divisive symbols were hurting the university’s efforts to recruit and retain minority students and were harming its national reputation.

ADVERTISEMENT

The following year, the university banned the longstanding tradition of waving Confederate flags during football games. Angry alumni and students accused the university of caving in to political correctness, and Mr. Khayat received death threats, which he said came from outside the state. Still, he doesn’t regret the decision.

“For years, we were burdened by the Confederate flag,” Mr. Khayat said in an interview this week. “It was much loved by many people and much despised by many people, and we spent a lot of years trying to condition people to understand that it was a thing of the past and it was harmful to Ole Miss and the state.”

A flurry of changes since then have made the campus a more welcoming and inclusive place, he said.

From 2008 to 2014, the number of freshman applications to the Oxford campus doubled, to 16,101. The number of black students doubled from 2001 to 2014, to 2,880, increasing from 12.5 percent to 14.3 percent of the enrollment.

ADVERTISEMENT

Changing a university’s culture takes years, even generations, said Marvin P. King Jr., an associate professor of political science and African-American studies at Ole Miss.

But at the same time, “cultures and attitudes rally around symbols,” he said, and when those symbols are inclusive, rather than exclusive, the university benefits.

As that shift has occurred in Mississippi, Mr. King said, “the university has become a bigger and better school.”

Even after the university banned Confederate flags at football games and ditched its longtime mascot, outbreaks of racism erupted.

ADVERTISEMENT

Last year vandals hung a noose and an old version of a Georgia flag adorned with the Confederate emblem on the statue of Mr. Meredith.

Three members of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity were expelled from the campus chapter, and this month a former student pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of threatening force to intimidate African-American students and employees at the university.

The incident illustrates that, “despite all of our progress, some people are going to resist or remain ignorant, and we still have work to do,” said Mr. Ross.

‘A Welcoming Environment’

In August, six months after the noose incident, the then chancellor, Daniel W. Jones, released an action plan for racial healing that drew on the work of a Sensitivity and Respect Committee. It also included recommendations of outside consultants, including Edward L. Ayers, a Civil War historian who is stepping down this month as president of the University of Richmond.

ADVERTISEMENT

The consultants recommended placing plaques on racially sensitive symbols, like the Confederate statue, rather than removing them. The plaques would provide historical context.

Last fall the university opened a Center for Inclusion and Cross Cultural Engagement to provide programs and services that bring people together.

“We strive to provide a welcoming environment, and if we have symbols that are exclusive, we have a responsibility to change them,” said the center’s director, Shawnboda Mead.

Other campuses are struggling to come up with their own solutions as the pressure to remove Confederate symbols intensifies.

ADVERTISEMENT

The University of Texas at Austin was already debating a proposal to move a statue of Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederacy, from its prominent place on a central mall to a museum when the Charleston massacre occurred.

Several days later the statues of three Confederate leaders were spray-painted with the words “Black Lives Matter” as a petition circulated by the student government was gathering more than 2,800 signatures of people calling for the statues’ removal.

The university’s new president, Gregory L. Fenves, has appointed a task force to consider options. It will be headed by Gregory J. Vincent, the Austin campus’s vice president for diversity and community engagement.

Mr. Vincent was a consultant to the University of Mississippi when it was scrutinizing its Confederate imagery as part of its effort to improve race relations. Although he was focusing on the university’s administrative structure, he saw how racially divisive symbols were hurting the university’s prestige.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The symbols were a very tragic and candidly racist part of the history, and in order for the university to move forward it had to move away from that,” Mr. Vincent said in an interview on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Board of Visitors of the Citadel, a public military college in Charleston, voted 9 to 3 this week to move a Confederate naval flag that hangs in a chapel to another location on the campus. Moving the flag would require the approval of the state’s Legislature but was the right thing to do, the institution’s president explained.

Other colleges that have struggled with their past include Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Va., where protests by black law students helped persuade the university to move Confederate flag replicas from a campus chapel to a museum, and Sewanee: the University of the South. In the mid-1990s, Sewanee took down flags from Southern states, some of which had Confederate imagery.

Removing such images is “a step in the right direction,” said Justavian Tillman, president of the University of Mississippi’s Black Student Union.

ADVERTISEMENT

“It will definitely take more than the removal of mere symbolism,” he added. The inevitable backlash that occurs “serves as a great learning opportunity on how doing what is right is not always popular, and it certainly won’t always be easy.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.

Read other items in Inequity in Higher Education: Campus Racial Tensions .
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Campus Culture
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
mangan-katie.jpg
About the Author
Katherine Mangan
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, student success, and job training, as well as free speech and other topics in daily news. Follow her @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
Duke Administrators Accused of Bypassing Shared-Governance Process in Offering Buyouts
Illustration showing money being funnelled into the top of a microscope.
'A New Era'
Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
Illustration showing classical columns of various heights, each turning into a stack of coins
Endowment funds
The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists

From The Review

John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson
Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin