Ghosts of Ole Miss

Featured on the front page of ESPN.com today is a great retelling of the terrible story. It is the story of the riots on the campus of my Alma Mater, Ole Miss, in 1962 during the enrollment of James Meredith, the first African American to attend Ole Miss. This dark narrative is juxtaposed in the piece with the story of the 1962 Ole Miss Rebel football team, one of the best in the college football that year, and probably the best in Ole Miss history.

This story was written by a fellow Mississippian, and it tells the truth of how very far we have come since those dark days, and how far we have yet to go. I am proud to be a Mississippian, I'm proud to be an Ole Miss alum, and I'm proud that my kids are growing up in a Mississippi, where black and white alike live together like never before, and in many ways, like nowhere else. We in the South, both black and white, have had to confront our issues of race, and we are all the better for it.

Sure we have a ways to go yet, but I love that most of the players for Ole Miss's football and basketball teams today are African American, my wife's best friend is African American, and my sons can chose who they befriend, hang out with, love, date and marry based on the content of their character, and not their race.

Alot of things have happened in my home state that make me want to cry, and we're still not perfect. But man, how I love progress.

Nolanbuck (Ole Miss, Class of '91)