Ole Miss chancellor halts song with segregationist baggage
By Jody Callahan
Posted November 10, 2009
Ole Miss fans won’t be hearing the song "From Dixie With Love" at athletic events anytime soon.
Because some fans continued chanting "The South will rise again!" at the end of the song despite requests to refrain from doing so, Chancellor Dan Jones has asked the school band to discontinue playing the song.
Many associate the chant with both the school and the area’s segregationist past.
"Here at the University of Mississippi, there must be no doubt that this is a warm and welcoming place for all," Jones wrote in a letter to the Ole Miss community. "We cannot even appear to support those outside our community who advocate a revival of segregation. We cannot fail to respond."
Jones said he would consider lifting the ban "if the chant stops and our elected student leaders ask for the song to return."
Jones said previously that, if the chant continued during last Saturday’s game against Northern Arizona, he would ask the band to discontinue the song.
"Yet some have chosen to continue the chant," Jones wrote. "Sadly, we have also heard from a few outside our university who support the chant as an expression of values associated with a segregationist movement discredited so many years ago."
2009 The E.W. Scripps Co.
On The Web: www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/nov/10/ole-miss-chancellor-halts-song-segregationist-bagg/
