September 26, 2008, 4:22 pm
Ku Klux Klan Members Plan to Appear at Presidential Debate Site
Corey Dade reports from Oxford, Miss., on the presidential race.
When the University of Mississippi hosts the first presidential debate tonight, the two sides of its troubled racial history could converge.
The Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan plan to be on campus for the face-off between Republican nominee John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major party, according to a Friday report in the university’s student newspaper.
University officials haven’t commented. But, since winning the bid as host a year ago, they have used the attention to promote the university’s efforts toward racial reconciliation.
The university newspaper, the Daily Mississippian, first reported earlier this month that the white supremacist group planned to appear among the throngs expected on the Oxford, Miss., campus. The emperor of the White Knights group, whose identity was withheld as a condition of the interview, said his members would be “invisible … Our people won’t be in regalia or demonstrating. So, I guess you’ll just have to guess which of the people present are Klansmen.”
Some at Ole Miss, as the school is commonly known, worry that the possible appearance of Klan members might undermine the debate as a symbolic turning point.
Ole Miss senior Paul Quinn, who wrote the articles, said in an interview that “some people standing up and saying this is not who we are. Everybody thinks it’s pretty chilling.”
Since 1962 when students and others rioted to prevent the enrollment of the first black student, James Meredith, the school has symbolized the most violent period of segregation.
At the time, two people were fatally shot and the mob raged for 14 hours before 30,000 U.S. soldiers arrived to end it.
For more than a decade the school has worked to overcome its image, starting with the elimination of some of its Confederate Army symbols. In 2006, Ole Miss unveiled a life-size bronze likeness of Meredith, which sits at the site of the riot and 100 yards from the statue of a Confederate soldier.
Black student enrollment has more than doubled in that span to 16%.
“We know people make jokes about us,” University Chancellor Robert Khayat said in an interview. “We’ve been on the wrong end of too many messages. It’s a great opportunity to be presented to the rest of the world as we are in 2008, not as we were.”
By not wearing their regalia, the Klan members would avoid being cordoned in the protest area, on a campus practice field.
Link
Original Post