re: So "Ole Miss" is what slaves used to be forced to call the plantation mistress

quote:

---

Much of the above is just wrong. When directly asked where the term Ole Miss came from, Miss Elma Meek, who supplied the term, stated that she took the name from the language of the ante-bellum “Darkey”, who knew the wife of his owner by no other title than “Ole Miss”. (My article on this is dated 1936) How much plainer can she be? This was done in 1896. She and the annual staff members knew, and lived around, many, many former slaves. Did those University students never talk to their Parents, Granparents or Aunts and Uncles about the “old” days? Did they never know or talk to former slaves? Please go Google “Ole Miss” with “WPA slave narrative” out to the side. You will see well over 100 uses of this term by the former slaves in the 1930s, in these interviews that are reproduced on the internet. I have gone through the 5 printed Mississippi volumes of these interviews and that term is used all through the five volumes as well as all the other state volumes. Does the author of the above think this term somehow vanished in 1865 and that Miss Meek, and the members of the annual staff never heard it? Did the former slaves cease using it in 1865? The University was named for a train and no one remembers that, or ever wrote it down in a school history? Nobody challenged Miss Meek and her account? Maud Morrow Brown, who was on that annual staff, who knew Miss Meek, and taught at Ole Miss and lived in Oxford all her adult life never set the record straight? Maude did not because she knew the truth because she lived it. Ole Miss is a slave term of respect. Get over it, don’t make up Fairy Tales. Miss Meek’s picture IS in the 1896 annual. I saw it online last night. So apparently, she was on campus and in contact with other students at the time. There was never any train connecting line between Oxford and Sardis, as claimed by the author. The “Old Miss” train never came through Oxford. W. C. Handy, in his autobiography, and another book, never claimed his song had anything to do with naming the University. Why would he not have been proud of that? Extrordinary claims call for extraordinary proof. I do not see that proof here. This is an unbelievable reach.

---

quote:

---

Essentially. They put the name "Ole Miss" on the yearbook and the name just stuck.

---

quote:

---

And even many black students here say they like the name, and see it as just a name.

---

quote:

---

Essentially. They put the name "Ole Miss" on the yearbook and the name just stuck.

---