Words and all
Tellers of tales have made Oxford, Miss., the repository of Southern heritage, their pages binding a rich culture and a tumultuous, often painful, history.
By BOB MERCER
Published March 20, 2005
OXFORD, Miss. - Not long after the Chickasaw tribe was sent out of these parts by the white settlers, this town's founders chose Oxford for the place's name. They had something big in mind.
The hope, back in 1835, was that such a name would start the state's politicians imagining the village as their own version of Oxford, England, and they would put Mississippi's first public university here.
And they did.
So you could say that this Oxford always has been a place where a word, carefully chosen, mattered.
Today, you can have a fine time in this university town, a literary hotbed in the piney hills of almost nowhere - 70 miles south, and then east, of the more-fabled Memphis. Oxford has no Interstate highway, no commercial airline service.
It's just a place for living the good life of words, music, food and appreciation of Southern culture.
It's a place for walking the same streets as did William Faulkner and John Grisham, staying on the shady side while you try to imagine how they lived and wrote here.
It's a place for being overwhelmed by so many choices at Square Books, one of the nation's great independent stores, with its stream of visiting authors and walls filled with their small, autographed photos.
For sale along the store's front window, the latest issue of Baseball America, the Bible of minor league and college baseball, awaits. It is testament to the love for the Ole Miss Rebels ballteam in this city of 12,000. That devotion is shared by Square Books' founder and owner - and season ticketholder and Ole Miss alum - Richard Howorth.
Howorth is unchallenged for another term as mayor of his hometown.
Over on campus is the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, started in 1977. For 12 years, the Center and the bookstore have put together the annual Oxford Conference for the Book, this year (April 7-9) celebrating Flannery O'Connor.
The big names who attend are usually numerous for this year's list, go to www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/ocb) and a good time seems guaranteed. The center also hosts a Mississippi Delta Literary Tour in the days preceding the conference (this year, April 4-7).
The center has produced an amazing book, the 1,634-page, single volume Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. A national model of its kind, it's worth every pound. But you might want to ship it separately if you're traveling by air.
The center also is home to the Southern Foodways Alliance. Its purpose is to "celebrate, preserve, promote and nurture" the traditional and developing food cultures of the South.
At its symposium last year, speakers looked at race through the lens of food. You can view some of the findings at www.southernfoodways.com The 2005 symposium is scheduled for Oct. 27-30, with a lighter focus this time - on sugar and sweetness.
Faulkner lived in Oxford from age 5, in 1903, until his death in 1962. By then his work had earned him a Nobel Prize, two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards. He is buried in St. Peter's Cemetery.
Ole Miss hosts the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, which is in its 32nd year and draws Faulkner scholars and fans from around the world.
This year's event, July 24-28, considers the regional history, personal events and intellectual movements that shaped his work. Many manuscripts, photos, books and memorabilia will be on display at the university's John Davis Williams Library (www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/faulkner)
Contemplating memory and changeLike Faulkner, Oxford demands contemplation. Should you let them, the deeper sides of both crawl up through your soul and start pawing around in your brain's attic.
"In the same moment that the mind condemns this way of life and judges it must perish, the heart must mourn its passing," J.M. Coetzee once wrote in an essay about Breyten Breytenbach. Coetzee was describing how his fellow South African author was "suddenly and strikingly reminiscent" of Faulkner in their focus on post-colonialism.
For Oxford, the dilemma is the struggle for atonement for past sins while honoring sacrifices made in their commission. How else to explain the recent restoration of the old depot, from where the young men of Ole Miss, still known as the University Greys, departed by train to meet their ends fighting at Gettysburg?
Across campus, you pause among the tall trees of the Grove, with its Confederate soldier monument standing sentinel over its entrance.
Here among the deep shadows, try to imagine the blind, incomprehensible fury of the mob in 1962, when James Meredith, accompanied by 100 federal marshals, became the first black student to enroll at Ole Miss. Two men died and 300 people were wounded in that night of rioting. In response, President Kennedy overwhelmed the city with nearly 30,000 troops - a federal occupation once again.
People here call that time The Year of Integration. They carefully point out that most of the rioters were outsiders who came to make a violent stand in favor of segregation.
While there is a brochure available recounting what happened, no directional signs point visitors across campus to the dormitory in which Meredith lived.
But Faulkner's supporters are likely to note there also are no highway signs leading visitors to Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home deep in the woods.
Restoration projects are under way at both the dormitory and Rowan Oaks. The same can be said of Oxford as a whole. The university nickname remains "Ole Miss" but one of its marketing slogans now is "Open Doors: 40 years of Opportunity."
Keeping the stories aliveSquare Books is an industry in itself, with Off Square Books down the street and Square Books Jr. children's store across the square.
Howorth operates a signed first editions club, with offerings from Jim Harrison, Anne Rice, Grisham, James Dickey, Richard Ford, Kaye Gibbons, Ann Beattie and many others. On Thursday afternoons from 5:30 to 6:30, Thacker Mountain Radio broadcasts live from Off Square Books a music and literature show. You can learn more at www.thackermountain.com.)
"When a community loses its memory, its members become isolated from one another. We have to know each others' stories, so that we can trust each other and learn from each other," Robert Khayat, the university's chancellor, said at Howorth's inauguration as mayor in July 2001. "(He) will be a trustworthy caretaker of our collective memory. He knows all of us and our stories and respects them."
You can feel Oxford reaching: Ole Miss, yes; Old South, no. The Civil War didn't end when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his men at Appomattox in April 1865. The integration riot at Ole Miss 97 years later proved that.
So it might be a bit much to expect Reconstruction to be complete. But the minds of modern Oxford are genuinely working on it.
- Freelance writer Bob Mercer lives in Pierre, S.D.
If you goGETTING THERE: To reach Oxford, tourists usually fly into Memphis, which has direct air service from Tampa Bay.
Before starting the drive into north Mississippi, visit the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel in downtown Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated:
Walk through the displays from the decades of struggle that preceded him. See the motel room where he stayed. Stand in the bathroom of the flophouse across the street, looking out the window from which James Earl Ray fired his Remington Bushmaster rifle.
It will help prepare your mind for your arrival at Oxford, where a Tiffany stained-glass window in Ventress Hall, opened in 1889, memorializes the University Greys and all Confederate soldiers.
FAULKNER'S HOUSE: Rowan Oak is owned by the university. The plot outline of his A Fable is sketched across two walls of the first-floor room that was his office. The restoration of the house is complete, with the grounds next in line for work.
The house is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays. It is closed Mondays and July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. The grounds are open daily during daylight hours.
People seeking tour arrangements can call (662) 234-2384.