Ole Miss: Learning curves, historic corners.

In ancient Athens, Aristotle taught at the lyceum, where the Greeks came to learn about art and beauty. The Ole Miss Lyceum, an elegant Greek Revival structure used for university administration, is where the Old South finally learned its much-needed lesson in humanity, a lesson that came at a high cost and that is today memorialized in the Civil Rights Monument.   Now, standing nearby a statue of a Confederate soldier (donated by Faulkner’s grandfather) is a statue of James Meredith, the scholar and leader who braved a violent mob to claim the simple right to be treated equally and decently. The bullet holes lodged in the fluted columns of the Lyceum during the 1962 Ole Miss riots have been carefully preserved. A sign of the times—then and now.

Today, Ole Miss is known for the inclusiveness not only of its enrollment but of its scholarly mission as well. The Center for Southern Culture, housed in the former Barnard Observatory, has become an internationally renowned resource for all things Southern, from literature to music to food and more. Not surprisingly, the archives at the J.D. Williams Library are vast, with more than 300 manuscript collections, including the Faulkner collection and over 20,000 volumes of Mississippiana. You’ll find B.B. King’s musical papers housed in the Library’s Blues Archive, the world’s largest repository of blues recordings and other blues materials. The Library’s archives also displays paintings, photographs and Faulkner’s Nobel swathed in a purple.

The University Museum is another see-it-now: its five collections include the works of Theora Hamblett, as well as collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, American art, folk art, and scientific instruments. Once you’ve taken in these cultural treasures, take the path through Bailey’s Woods to the cultural crown jewel: the lion’s den, the place where Faulkner composed most of his great works, creating a world called Yoknapatawpha.