Letter: Name Ole Miss journalism school for Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Letter: Name Ole Miss journalism school for Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Video Courtesy of Local 24 Memphis


After a Facebook post by a prominent University of Mississippi donor was denounced as racist, some professors say the university should rename its journalism school for an African-American journalist who crusaded against lynching.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born a slave in Mississippi in 1862. She went on to become an investigative reporter in nearby Memphis, Tennessee, and denounced racial violence. She helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and pushed for women’s right to vote. Wells-Barnett died in 1931 in Chicago.

Ole Miss donor Ed Meek, for whom the Meek School of Journalism and New Media is named, has asked that his name be removed from the school after he posted photos of two black women on Facebook on Sept. 19 and wrote: “A 3 percent decline in enrollment is nothing compared to what we will see if this continues … and real estate values will plummet as will tax revenues. We all share in the responsibility to protect the values we hold dear that have made Oxford and Ole Miss known nationally.”

Meek apologized for the post after receiving sharp criticism. The women were University of Mississippi students who said they had simply gone out after a football game to have fun with friends. Both denounced Meek’s post as demeaning.

A letter from 62 Ole Miss professors and several instructors and graduate students was published Friday in the student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian , suggesting the journalism school be named for Wells-Barnett. They also suggest that the university start journalism scholarships for black women and that it start a Reparative Justice Committee that would work toward removing a Confederate soldier statue that has stood for generations in a prominent place on campus.

“Removing Ed Meek’s name from the School is a necessary, but basic, step in a much longer process of reparative justice,” the letter said. “Our university must firmly stand for its stated values of intellectual excellence, non-discrimination and inclusion and support for all its students.”

The ultimate decision about whether to remove Meek’s name from the journalism school would belong to the state College Board. Meek led Ole Miss public relations for 37 years, starting in 1964, and has had other publishing businesses. The journalism school was named for him after he and his wife donated $5.3 million in 2009.

The university has struggled for decades to deal with its history of troubled race relations. White mobs rioted on campus in the autumn of 1962 as James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at Ole Miss; military troops were called in and Meredith was escorted by federal marshals.

Mississippi’s population is about 38 percent black, and black students made up 12.7 percent of the Ole Miss enrollment in 2017.

In an effort to promote racial diversity in recent years, Ole Miss renamed a street that had been called Confederate Drive and installed plaques to provide historical background, including on the Confederate soldier statue.

In July 2017, the university announced it would put up signs acknowledging that some buildings on campus were built with slave labor. The university also announced then that it would remove the name of James K. Vardaman from a building. Vardaman, a white supremacist, was Mississippi’s governor from 1904 to 1908 and a U.S. senator from 1913 to 1919.

The Necessary Future of the NAACP

NAACPThis week marked the centennial celebration of the nation’s oldest and most respected civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Hundreds gathered in New York City, the birthplace of the organization, to reflect on history and cast a vision for the future.

What began as a small meeting of the minds, including Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Dubois, is now a multi-faceted organization with multiple outreach campaigns and a multi-million dollar budget. As of late, the NAACP has taken up causes like health care, economic empowerment, and education — without ceasing to support the social justice platform upon which the organization was founded.

Despite the NAACP’s victories, there are those who believe that the NAACP is a “graying” organization. Moreover, there are those who believe that civil rights organizations of its kind are no longer necessary. With regard to the necessity of the NAACP today, it was the NAACP’s New York chapter president, Hazel Dukes, who led the fight for justice in the case of Sean Bell, an unarmed African American man gunned down in Queens, New York (by New York City police officers). As Reggie Clemmons (a man on death row believed to have been wrongfully convicted) sits in a Missouri prison two weeks away from legal injection, it is the NAACP that continues to fight for his release. These are key examples of why the NAACP is still necessary.

“I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009,” said President Barack Obama on the closing night of the NAACP convention. “But make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America.”

President Obama is right. Though we’ve come the proverbial “long way” since 1909, for many people of color — and therefore for all of us — the struggle continues.

In the hearts and minds of African Americans across the country, there’s often a slight reminder (no matter how subtle) — that freedom was never free for us. Organizations like the NAACP, National Council of Negro Women, and the National Urban League should continue to do the work that rids this country of inequitable practices and disparaging behaviors. We should keep these organizations alive and support them by becoming active and involved. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “silence is betrayal.”

If organizations like the NAACP had been silent long ago, African Americans may not have enjoyed the pride that all of America experienced on January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States. We must continue to challenge one another to become more involved in organizations that promote change and equality for all people.