On Wednesday, we went to Oxford, Mississippi! (By the way, down south, they don't say Mississippi, they say Mis-Sippi. I just thought that would be a great short "geography" lesson.) Anyway, visiting Ole Miss University was yet another powerful experience.
Similar to last year, we met up with Curtis Wilkie. He was a senior at Ole Miss during the period when James Meredith desegregated the school. I was expecting him to talk about James Meredith desegregating Ole Miss, which Wilkie did discuss, but we also had an unexpected and most welcomed guest visit from Professor Don Cole. He was just walking through the lyceum quad during our group's conversation with Wilkie. Wilkie invited Professor Cole to talk about his experiences at Ole Miss. And, oh, did Professor Cole speak.
He told us so many things about the atmosphere on campus while he was a student. In fact, he was expelled from Ole Miss University in the early 1970s because of his activeness in trying to actually integrate a desegregated school. His story was truly touching.
After our visit of Ole Miss, we traveled down to Clarksdale, Mis-Sippi (were you paying attention?). We enjoyed less then 10 minutes of the Delta Blues Museum! Yeah, we made it just at closing time. Unfortunately, we got lost. Again.
I probably neglected to tell you earlier that other than learning about the Civil Rights movement, our trip's underlining theme this year was, "which way is the best way to get ... lost?" I promise you, every time we turned our SUV's ignition on, we were bound to get lost somehow. How unfortunate. Nonetheless, it was great bonding time in the vehicles.
Also, later that evening we ate dinner at Morgan Freeman's restaurant - Ground Zero. It was an interesting place. I think that it was an excellent replica of a place where they played the Blues down in the delta - in the middle of nowhere.
