Students shout down Ku Klux Klan

OXFORD, Miss. — A rally by the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan fizzled soon after it began this morning as students shouted down the 11 KKK members who were protesting a University of Mississippi decision to bar the school band from playing “From Dixie with Love” — a medley that some football fans append by shouting, “The South shall rise again.”

The KKK members, in full red, white and black regalia, including hoods that covered the faces of all but one member, silently waved Confederate battle flags and the KKK flag as they stood in front of the Fulton Chapel while a mostly student crowd called the members “white trash,” among other insults.

Klan leaders had said they were holding the rally to support fans’ free-speech right to shout, “The South shall rise again.”

The crowd did not see things that way.

“Go to hell, KKK, go to hell,” the group shouted in unison.

Shane Tate of Tupelo, the grand titan of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, apparently shouted something in response, but he could not be heard over the crowd noise.

A host of local and campus police, along with riot-gear-wearing state troopers, separated crowd members from the Klansmen, who left under a police escort five hours before the start of the LSU-Ole Miss football game.

Tate had said he expected from 20 to 100 KKK members for the rally, but his turnout was far smaller.

Student Nikki McGee of McComb, Miss., said she and friends had come to the Grove, the school’s legendary spot for pregame tail-gating, but were attracted by the crowd of about 300 people at the protest site.

“To me, this is a representation of what people think Ole Miss is,” said McGee, who is African-American.

“They’re just trying to make it look like it is, but it’s not.”

The KKK rally, she said, “is very stupid, very stupid.”

When the rally began, a group of more than 100 students, faculty and alumni held a counter-protest. They wore white T-shirts that said “Turn your back on hate” and “I live by the UM Creed.”

With their backs to the KKK members about 30 yards away, the group read over and over the university’s student creed which says, among other things, “I believe in respect for the dignity of each person.”

Associated Student Body president Artair Rogers of Guntown, Miss., said the counter-protest was “truly a university effort.”

“Our major concern was to show that this is what we stand for as a university,” Rogers said.

“We just wanted everyone to know what we as Ole Miss students stand for.”

University Chancellor Dan Jones on Nov. 17 ordered the band to stop playing “From Dixie with Love,” a medley that blends “Dixie,” the Confederate Army’s fight song, with the Union Army’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

The band has played the song during Ole Miss football games for about 20 years.

Jones said the “South shall rise again” chant supports “those outside our community who would advocate a revival of segregation.”

In a news release announcing the rally, the KKK’s Tate said his group, part of the Southern Alliance of Klans, which claims more than 7,000 members, believes Jones’ decision was an “attack on our Southern heritage and culture.”