Honors Theses

Date of Award

Spring 4-19-2021

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Journalism

First Advisor

Cynthia Joyce

Second Advisor

Alysia Steele

Third Advisor

Marquita Smith

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

This thesis tells the story of how thousands of students, faculty, staff, alumni and other members of the university community banded together to relocate The University of Mississippi’s Confederate monument. The movement for relocation officially began in the spring of 2019 with the unanimous vote by the Associated Student Body Senate to move the monument to UM’s Confederate cemetery, but long before that, change happened at the university that paved the way.

This creative telling of recent history explains how national and local events — including pro-Confederate marches in Oxford and the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — brought the university to move its Confederate monument from a prominent place in the heart of campus to the more appropriate Confederate cemetery on the outskirts of university property.

I spoke with over 100 members of the university community from November 2018 to the present while reporting on the monument for The Daily Mississippian, UM’s independent student newspaper. Thousands of people read those articles as they were published, and this narrative collectively addresses the community reaction as events unfolded.

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