Nadine Cohodas

I thought the book was pretty good. Both the start and the end of the book dragged a bit, which is why I gave it three stores rather than five stars. Then again, the opening of biographies is often slow. How interesting can you really make in infancy or early childhood in most instances? Say that he was precocious and ambitious as a youngster; this could have been said in fewer pages but that is a common ill of the genre. And maybe that is the reason I picked the book up and put it down a few times in the last five or so years since I bought it.

All the same, I learned a lot from the book about America’s 20th century in the South. At the opening of his life in 1903, the South had only recently emerged from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Obviously a natural politician, his political career started when he was a very young man, in local politics. He went on to become a county judge, and after returning from service in World War II, served a term as governor of South Carolina.

He gained national note as a third-party candidate for president in 1948. He also gained a very hard to live down reputation as a segregationist. In 1954 he was elected to the senate as the only candidate ever elected on a right-in vote. He was somewhat of a maverick, switching from the Democratic party of the “Solid South” to the Republican Party.

He was continually reelected through the time of the writing of the book, which was 1993. The book chronicles his transition from being a segregationist to someone who was able to engage with racial minorities.

Again, reading the book was enjoyable and a solid educational experience.… (plus d'informations)

Mississippi, with its rich and dramatic history, holds a special place in the civil rights movement. Perhaps no other institution in that state, or in the South as a whole, has been more of a battleground for race relations or a barometer for progress than the University of Mississippi. Even the school's affectionate nickname - Ole Miss - bespeaks its place in the legacy of the South: now used as short for Old Mississippi, "Ole Miss" was once a term of respect used by slaves for the wife of a plantation owner. Throughout the first part of this century, the state's "Boll Weevil" legislators presented the most implacable hostility to black enrollment.

The campus itself - with its stately white columns and field of Confederate flags at sporting events - seemed almost frozen in time. With the civil rights movement and the arrival of the first black student in 1962, the quietly determined James Meredith, violence and hatred erupted with regularity on the verdant campus. Even following years of progress, when a young black man and young white woman were elected "Colonel Rebel" and "Miss Ole Miss, " the highest campus honors, the pair appeared in the traditional yearbook photograph separated by a picket fence, still suggesting old taboos. Once an unrepentant enclave of educational separatism in the South, the history of Ole Miss has paralleled the nation's own in race relations: the rocky beginnings of integration following Meredith's admission; the discord of the sixties and seventies, when activist black students eschewed crew cuts and varsity sweaters for Afros and clenched fists; to the delicate reconciliation of recent years. A drastically changed campus today, Ole Miss continues to wrestle with its controversial mascot, "Colonel Rebel, " and questions of whether the emotional chords of "Dixie" should still be heard at its football games.

The Band Played Dixie is a penetrating look at the University of Mississippi - ‘Ole Miss’. Nadine Cohodas (author of Spinning Blues Into Gold) covers the institution’s tumultuous racial history, with emphasis on how Ole Miss moved forward from the riot that erupted after James Meredith, the first African-American student, enrolled September 30, 1962.

Updated in 2012 for the 50th Anniversary of the integration of Ole Miss.… (plus d'informations)