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Scholar Finds Evidence 'Ole Miss' Train Key in Establishing University Nickname
Dr. Albert Earl Elmore is a noted scholar who holds degrees from Milsaps College and Ole Miss Law School with a Ph.D in English Literature from Vanderbilt.
The winner of six grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is the author of essays on Faulkner and Fitzgerald as well as the 2009 book, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: Echoes of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer.
Dr. Elmore, after years of research, has unearthed both the words and music of the classic, but long-forgotten song “The Ole Miss Blues.” Dr. Elmore has written two essays on the topic; the first on the song itself, a poetic and colorful work by the composer W.C. Handy, who was also a scholarly professor of music as well as a famed performer.
In two previous articles, here, and here, I have argued against the mistaken belief that Ole Miss as a term for the University of Mississippi derived from “a name used by slaves to refer to the lady of the plantation” (The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History). The term derived instead from a name for the state of Mississippi as a whole and had nothing to do with slavery.
The present article will focus on a train called the Old Miss that was almost certainly the major reason for the name Ole Miss to undergo a sudden and dramatic change on the campus of the University during the 1908-09 school year. Before then, the name had referred exclusively to the yearbook that had been named the “Ole Miss” at its inception during the 1896-97 school year. During 1908-09, this same name — Ole Miss — came to be applied again and again, and for the first time ever, to the entire University.
Why? How could a train provoke such a sudden and lasting change? And was it the same train that the great W. C. Handy, Father of the Blues who often played for dances at the University of Mississippi, would write a famous song about in 1916?
At the turn of the century, in 1900, Memphis was a larger city than Nashville, Atlanta, or even Los Angeles. Among Southern cities, only New Orleans was more populous. The major newspaper of Memphis, the Commercial Appeal, served as the most influential journal of any kind throughout the heart of the South. Already rich and powerful, the great newspaper undertook in late 1908 to expand its circulation by charter-ing a couple of passenger trains on a daily basis from two different railroads. These trains were named the Old Miss and the Volunteer. The first served the state of Mississippi, the second the state of Tennessee.
These two trains continued a tradition begun around the turn of the century when the same newspaper had chartered first the Arkansas Traveler and then the Newsboy to deliver its papers into the states of Arkansas and Alabama. Apparently it was the news-paper itself that selected the train names, not the railroad companies from whom it rented.
According to an advertisement that ran on page one of the Commercial Appeal on January 18, 1909, “OLD MISS (Illinois Central) leaves Memphis for Jackson, Mississippi every morning, Sunday included, at 3 am. Takes passengers for Sardis, Grenada and all points in Mississippi below Grenada. Returning, Old Miss arrives in Memphis at 4:30 pm and takes passengers from all points on the IC north of Jackson.”
About a month later, on February 13, 1909, another advertisement, also on page one, declared, “By means of Old Miss and the News Boy, the Commercial Appeal covers 2/3 of Mississippi before 12 o’clock.” Such speed meant that not only newspaper subscribers but also train passengers were very well served by the new chartered trains of the great Memphis newspaper. The Volunteer ran from Memphis to Nashville, the Old Miss from Memphis to Jackson. It is not clear at this time whether the Old Miss may have continued, at least some of the time, below Jackson.
The Old Miss was clearly given its name to suggest the state of Mississippi, just as the Volunteer was named to suggest the state of Tennessee. The owners of the Commercial Appeal had no reason to associate either train with slavery, nor did they. Indeed many of the passengers on their trains were black, including W. C. Handy. Handy had moved from Florence, Alabama to Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1903 and thence to Memphis in 1905. Until he moved again — to New York in 1918 — Memphis was home to both his publishing company and his famous band, the same band that William Faulkner loved to listen to at dances in private homes around Oxford as well as on the Ole Miss campus.
Did Ole Miss students know about the Old Miss train? There can be no reason-able doubt that they did and that they rode it back and forth through Sardis to either Memphis or Jackson. Sardis was less than 25 miles from Oxford by connecting train. These same students were reading the Commercial Appeal in 1908 and 1909 as the most important newspaper in their whole region, and that great and influential journal was describing again and again, often on its front pages, the speed and reliability of the Old Miss train.
It can hardly be a surprise that the 1909 yearbook, recording the events of the 1908-09 school year, opens with a drawing of a train called the Ole Miss. On the face of the train, the word “OLE” appears above the number “1909,” identifying the yearbook’s date, while the word “MISS” appears below that date. Changing the spelling to conform to the title of their own yearbook would have been a natural and expected thing to do.
The train in the yearbook drawing is obviously intended to suggest speed, first in the speedlines drawn on its visible side and then in the steamy plume curling above those lines. Two creatures fleeing from the speeding train accentuate the suggestion of speed. One is the bird of time, the other Father Time with his famous sickle. The author of the drawing has penciled his own name, Boyd, below the train—almost certainly this was Addison Brooks Boyd of the Engineering Class, a native of Water Valley, Mississippi. The drawing is even more impressive because it’s in color, a rarity for that day. The brown-and-black train is inscribed in a striking red circle, with the background of the whole drawing a luminous green.
The last regular page of the yearbook, just before the Index and Advertisements, shows a passenger train in a long shot from the rear as it moves under a bridge and through a valley. Both logic and symmetry would dictate that the same Ole Miss train which has opened the yearbook is now closing it.
It is interesting and revealing that six of the yearbook’s advertisements are for businesses in Memphis. It is the only city besides Oxford that is represented by more than one ad. More remote than Memphis, Jackson is represented by just one. Clearly Ole Miss students spent a significant portion of their free time in the metropolis of Memphis, and it was trains that made this possible, especially the speedy Old Miss. They could be in Memphis by 4:30 and then catch the train home for campus at midnight.
It is even more significant that the 1909 yearbook is the very first in which Ole Miss appears as a name for the University as a whole. If a fast train is steaming through your state every day, delivering both passengers and headlined newspapers hot off the press, and advertising itself on its own front pages as the Old Miss, you’re going to take notice as a student at the oldest university in the state of Mississippi. You’re going to think that Ole Miss — by any spelling — is such a good name that it would be a waste of a golden opportunity to restrict it to your yearbook and not to use it for your university as a whole. If a train called the Old Miss can serve the state of Mississippi under that increasingly popular name, why not use it for the oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning in the very same state?
The 1909 yearbook that opened and closed with a picture of the Ole Miss train again and again uses Ole Miss to refer to the entire University. Here are five quotes from that yearbook, the middle three taken from football songs and yells in the Athletics section.
Throughout the Commonwealth the Alumni of OLE MISS are dominating and moulding public policy and sentiment, and it is they who are proving the most powerful factor towards ushering in the Greater University of Mississippi.
Oh, here’s to “Ole Miss,” the source of all our bliss! Hurrah, “Ole Miss,” we’ll raise a song to thee! Here’s to “Ole Miss,” the school we love! What a victory we felt was ours was can be appreciated only by one of “Ole Miss’s” devotees!
Clearly the abrupt spread of the name from yearbook to university during this one school year must have been influenced by that dashing new chartered train out of Memphis.
But even if we go back to the name of the yearbook that was selected in 1896, it had nothing to do with slavery. We saw in an earlier article that Elma Meek, who suggested it, was thinking of the Ole Miss in the big house on plantations of her own time, long after slavery had ended. Nor is there a shred of evidence that the yearbook staff who approved her suggested title for their yearbook had even one grain of awareness of what Elma Meek herself was thinking.
Indeed there is perfectly good evidence that that very first annual staff was not thinking like Elma Meek. When they published that first yearbook in 1897, what symbol of Ole Miss did they themselves select for their opening page? Was it a splendidly gowned, lily-white Ole Missis or Ole Miss in a rocking chair on the front porch of a Tara-like plantation, taking tea from her faithful darkie servants? Not at all! The symbol that appears on the first page of the 1897 yearbook is a drawing of the Mississippi River — the old Mississippi, the ole Miss.
How do we know, other than common sense, that the river the yearbook staff selected as its very first symbol for its very first yearbook was indeed the Mississippi River?
Because those students took the trouble to explain their intention by adding a caption underneath: “Down On the Mississippi Flowing.” Was their caption in any way a reference to the Ole Miss of any plantation of any period? Absolutely not! The quoted line is drawn from Stephen Foster’s lovely song, “Nellie Was a Lady.” In utter contrast to the lily-white Ole Miss of the plantation, the Nellie of Foster’s song is a lovely black woman mourned by her true love after his “dark Virginny bride” has met her sad and untimely death “down by the Mississippi flowing.”
More research remains to be done to determine whether the fast train chartered by the Commercial Appeal in 1908 is the same fast train —“The Fastest Thing Out Of Memphis” — that W. C. Handy wrote about in his “Ole Miss Rag” eight years later, reissued with words in 1918 as the “Ole Miss Blues.” Because Handy described his train as running from Memphis all the way to New Orleans and not just to Jackson, there may have been two different trains called the Ole Miss. Or the first train may simply have evolved a longer route between 1908 and 1916. The answer, when found, will only enrich this discussion. It will not undermine a single conclusion.
For the simple truth is that the name Ole Miss as a familiar and affectionate term for the University of Mississippi was born, not in the Ole Miss of slavery and not even in the Ole Miss of sharecropping, but in clear and documented associations with the state of Mississippi as a whole, first with the great river that gave the state its name and then with a fast train that traversed much if not all of Mississippi. These associations were clearly echoed by Ole Miss students in their early yearbooks. Whether there was one train or two trains called the Ole Miss, there is no doubt that W. C. Handy made some train of that name immortal with a song in 1916, a song that the University of Mississippi — Ole Miss — has either overlooked or ignored, to its enduring loss and detriment, ever since.
| Sat, Aug 31 |  | vs Furman | W, 76-0 |
| Sat, Sep 7 |  | vs Middle Tennessee | W, 52-3 |
| Sat, Sep 14 |  | @ Wake Forest | W, 40-6 |
| Sat, Sep 21 |  | vs Georgia Southern | W, 52-13 |
| Sat, Sep 28 |  | vs Kentucky | L, 20-17 |
| Sat, Oct 5 |  | @ South Carolina | W, 27-3 |
| Sat, Oct 12 |  | vs LSU | L, 29-26 (2 OT) |
| Sat, Oct 26 |  | vs Oklahoma | W, 26-14 |
| Sat, Nov 2 |  | @ Arkansas | W, 63-35 |
| Sat, Nov 16 |  | vs Georgia | W, 28-10 |
| Sat, Nov 23 |  | @ Florida | 11:00 AM ABC or ESPN |
| Sat, Nov 30 |  | vs Mississippi State | 2:30 PM ESPN or ABC |
Edward M. M.
October 25, 2014 at 9:59 am
Yes, “the 1909 yearbook, recording the events of the 1908-09 school year, opens with a drawing of a train called the Ole Miss.”
But the train image that appeared in the 1909 yearbook, both discussed and described in Dr. Elmore’s article tracing the origins of “Ole Miss”, was not the first train drawing used in a University publication. A similar train drawing appears in the 1907 yearbook on one of the Engineering school pages. Both trains clearly have the year indicated on the front of the train, on the smoke box door, in the same location.
Yes, there is a song called the “Ole Miss (Rag)”
https://ia701201.us.archive.org/1/items/W.C.Handy-OleMissRag1917/W.C.Handy-OleMissRag1917.mp3
But it was written by W.C. Handy © 1916,
https://digital.library.msstate.edu/cdm/ref/collection/SheetMusic/id/24191
that he recorded on vinyl in 1917.
In his Program Notes for a 1999 Faculty Recital, David Warren Steel wrote the following about the 1913 Handy composition:
Ole Miss was published as a piano rag, but includes a second strain marked “tempo di blues.” It was named for a train, popular with students, that ran between Memphis, Oxford, and the Mississippi Delta.
However, there is documentation that indicates that on September 24, 1908, there was a “most auspicious” opening (of the University of Mississippi school year). “Beautiful program carried out. Chancellor in a few well-chosen words welcomed all and predicted a great year for “Ole Miss.””
In the 1908 yearbook, the FRESHMAN CLASS HISTORY stated: You are expected, of course, to picture your own particular class as consisting of the best-looking, the smartest, in fact, the most illustrious class that has ever helped mark up the desks of “Ole Miss.”
Is this a reference to the University as Ole Miss?
If we go back a few years more to 1905, there was a story published titled: WHEN I THINK HOW WE BEAT BERT FISHER’S TEAM”
It included the following lines….
…The men soon went to Oxford to see the play at the Grand and give the player’s time to sleep and dream of how they would make star plays and touchdowns for “Ole Miss.” …and,
…When the Varsity trotted out to Red Elm, red and blue filled the bleachers, while many three-times-three and other familiar yells greeted the ears of each alumnus and supporter of Ole Miss…,
and finally,
…Well, to make this short, when the whistle blew for the last of the second half, “Ole Miss”‘ was 12 and Nashville 5. We all felt happy and were proud of our boys, while it was an effort for Fisher to smile so pleasantly, so we all took one (or more) for Ole Miss and returned to good old Oxford.
Back in 1904, an out of state student wrote about how he “studied law at Chicago, but says the school of “Ole Miss ” is the most thorough he has yet found. “
The 1904 yearbook also printed
“You’ve heard of how we go shirt-sleeved In Texas,
and perspire In Winter,
while you “Ole Miss” folks
Hug close a warm coal-fire…
And the poem
…Oh! Cupid’s cold breeze,
Brings the very best freeze,
That comes to our warm Texas clime;
So take care, my friends,
For Dan Cupid sends
To “Ole Miss” such Northers sometime.
The ‘04 yearbook also used the statement:
Three cheers for the winners and three cheers for “Ole Miss.”
And, my personal favorite from 1904 is what may be the first published Ole Miss limerick…
There was a young man from “Ole Miss”
Who from a young Miss stole a kiss;
Since the Miss missed the kiss
And the kiss was amiss,
The young man now misses the Miss.
The Senior Class of 1902 reminisced that:
The Class has taken high standing in all the walks of University life. We have taken more than our share of honors. Nearly every organization of the University has members of the Class upon its rolls. In fact, as a class, we have the best of reasons for feeling proud of ourselves; but we will not enumerate our honors. Our days within the hallowed walls of “Ole Miss” have been spent pleasantly, indeed.
College fight songs in 1900 praised our football team in “Hot Time.”
Don’t you see those boys? Don’t you see those boys?
They are playing for the glory of Mississippi!
Don’t you see those boys? Don’t you see those boys’
They are playing for the glory of “Ole Miss.”
In addition to the Football team, the Baseball team had its own, memorable cheer:
Come along get you ready,
Wear the crimson and the blue,
For there’s going to be a meeting for many and for few,
“Where you know every player,
Catcher, pitcher and first base, too,
And when “Ole Miss” gets after Tulane
What in the mischief will she do?
A little poem that Durell Miller published in 1899 titled Ole Miss also mentions our beloved Grove
A thousand leagues or prairie
Between my heart and bliss;
How can it then be merry?
Beloved Ole Miss?
How strong soe’er I be
I needs must weep at this:
Thy hallowed groves I see
No more, Ole Miss!
The sailor lad at sea
Yearns for his mother’s loss,
So longs my heart for thee,
Most dear Ole Miss.
Let fortune smile on me,
Or o’er my failures hiss,
As I am true to thee,
Or false, Ole Miss!
Success to thee Ole Miss,
Till man and mind dissever.
While truth is honored high
Beneath our Southern sky,
Thy fame will never die,
But grow forever!!
That same year, the Rooters’ Brigade (now called the Ole Miss Rebelettes) began to use the cheer:
Don’t you see those boys? Don’t you see those boys?
They are playing for the glory of Mississippi!
Don’t you see those boys? Don’t you see those boys!
They are playing for the glory of “Ole Miss.”
And finally, another cheer for the football team from 1899 called A Little College Spirit
Who dat say Mississippi can’t play ball?
Whoever said so lied, and dat ain’t all –
We ain’t skeered of any ole team;
‘Cause we ain’t as weak as we seem.
Who dat say Ole Miss can’t play ball.
In song, in writing, in speeches and in poetry that pre-date W.C. Handy’s rag, before the train from Memphis to New Orleans was called Old Miss, and before the Memphis newspaper chartered trains through Sardis – there are numerous historical references where the University of Mississippi was called “Ole Miss.”
As early as 1899 – Ole Miss was the yearbook, Ole Miss was the football team, Ole Miss was the Baseball team, and Ole Miss was the University of Mississippi.
I do not believe that the time between 1908-09 was the first time “Ole Miss came to be applied again and again, and for the first time ever, to the entire University.
However, I am not a scholar, I am not a Historian, and I did not spend many years on Research….
William B. Lowry
October 26, 2014 at 9:43 pm
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.
William B. Lowry
October 26, 2014 at 9:53 pm
Miss Elma Meek is pictured in the 1897 Ole Miss annual, not 1896 annual as I wrote above. There of course was no 1896 annual.
harold lewis littlejohn
October 27, 2014 at 2:25 am
I agree with your comments William B Lowery I knew Miss Meek I use to deliver meds to her. I worked at Gathright Reed Drug Store. Max Reed told me the true story where the name “Ole Miss” came from.he never mentioned a train. You got it right!! You story fits his exactly.
Jack Fudge
October 27, 2014 at 8:42 am
In the late 1930’s I recall riding a train from Pontotoc to Laurel
called the Rebel. The 1940’s a train called the Tennessian. Why not one called Ole Miss? A freight train stopped at the Oxford Depot on a daily trip from Jackson, TN to Jackson, MS.
The conductor would let me climb onto the locomotive. Those were very great events for a youngster.
Drinda Rawlings
October 27, 2014 at 1:50 pm
If, in fact, the information provided by Edward M.M., William Lowry, Harold Lewis Littlejohn and Jack Fudge is true which seems to be, then it would appear that the esteemed professor’s research methods and opinions need to be called into question on a higher level than this.
William B. Lowry
October 27, 2014 at 2:40 pm
This whole thing bothers me a great deal. Let me go a little further with it. I could write pages, but this may blow it all out of the water. The author makes the arguement that while Miss Meek may have understood the context of the phrase “Ole Miss” for the mistress of the plantation, the annual staff probably did not. Here is a poem in that first, 1897 Ole Miss annual:
To The Beloved Mother of this Fair Daughter and Namesake
To Ole Miss, thy name is fair, Ole Miss, we can nor fear, To praise thee.
Ole Miss, our hearts are thine: Ole Miss we ever pine, When from thee.
Ole Miss, our lady fair, Ole Miss beyond compare We love thee. (signed) Alumni
This all ties in with the then popular phrase Alma Mater, latin for “kind mother” and a reference for one’s University. But, women did name their daughters after themselves in those days. Is this a poem by a coed to her mother? Why is the plural used as in “We love thee” It is signed, Alumni, so is it a poem to the University? Is this the first use of Ole Miss to refer to the University of Mississippi? I certainly do not think it means Old Mississippi, the State or the River.
The annual staff certainly did understand Ole Miss to be a term of endearment and respect. It is used as such in their own annual. They also knew who and where it came from.
I have lots more facts about all this. Want to hear more? 🙂
Clay Garner
November 3, 2014 at 8:33 am
Mr. Lowery, why does this bother you so much? Why is it so important for you? And how did you write an article in 1936? That was 78 years ago.
Why not letting sleeping dogs lie. If it did come from a slave vernacular, if it was used as a term of endearment, if it was about a white lady, then how could the term be racist. It can’t, but the way our society is politically correct there are people who will try. Hasn’t the University suffered enough controversy?
The symbols of the Confederacy have been removed and right now I would imagine that if you polled African Americans in Mississippi they wouldn’t view the term Ole Miss as racist. But if people are told again and again over time, it will become so.
So do I want to hear more? No, I would like you all to simply let it go.
William B. Lowry
November 8, 2014 at 11:18 am
Mr. Garner, First of all you mis-spelled my name. It is Lowry. I suggest you go do a Google search on it and you may learn something. Why is all this important to me? History, facts, truth, do you like those things? I have a COPY of a 1936 Mississippian (student paper) article that quotes Maude M. Brown on all this. The OP said his article, quoting her and Miss Elma Meek was dated 1939. I thought it was important to show this went back to 1936, not 1939. His copy is probably a reprint. I also happen to have copies of all of Maude Morrow Brown’s personal papers. In speaking of the term Ole Miss you wrote, “If it did come from slave vernacular…”. That is a fact, it did. Please see my earlier posts and Google “Ole Miss” with “slave narrative”, out to the side. Go see the WPA interviews with real live former slaves. Miss Meek, who supplied the term, said it came from a slave term. Is that not good enough for you? You don’t want to hear more? You kind of remind me of people who cover their ears and don’t want to be confused with the facts.
Mr. Garner, now I am going to surprise you. You and I are pretty much on the same side in this thing. The University should keep Ole Miss, the Colonel, Dixie, and the Battle Flag, and the street names they have tried to get rid of. I have no problem with any of it. It is all part of the University’s grand history. From the schools use as a hospital during the War, to the student company, the University Greys, Ole Miss is soaked in the Old Confederacy. The men who started the school in 1848 and the men who re-started it back in 1866, were almost all tied to the Confederacy, in one way or another. The University would not exist without those men. I would take an educated guess that as many as 25% of the pre War alumni and the students, died in the War, and another 25% were wounded. Now the school is ashamed of all of them, sad.
I never cease to be amazed at the Ole Miss graduates who have no idea of their University’s history, even down to Her beloved nick name. Part of that is the school’s fault and some of it is the older Alumni’s fault. Wake up, learn, do some research and fight for your University’s history and heritage. It is truly amazing and worth saving.
Who was William B. Lowry?????????
William B. Lowry
November 8, 2014 at 11:47 am
If you don’t know your school’s history, then you will be willing to get rid of it for a football coach who promises you a championship or maybe one more win a year, if you get rid of it. Can you say Tommy Tubervill, and several others. Well, he is gone and I must have missed that championship he won. The Chancellor used him to get what he could not do on his own, get rid of the Battle Flag. We lost a part of the schools history for an empty promise.
If you don’t know your history, then you just might believe some Professor who claims the Ole Miss name came from a train, or that Colonel Rebel was based on Blind Jim. Trust me, that is NOT true either.
How do you boil a frog????? Kind of the same way you take away a proud region’s symbology and self identity. Maybe you ought to ask the Scots about that sometime.
Judye Bates Miles
December 17, 2014 at 7:23 pm
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!! Great article! Thank you!
Christopher
December 30, 2014 at 10:35 am
Great article. It seems that two extremes would oppose these findings – both the misty-eyed Confederados who are stuck in 1863 and the South-hating nitwits who are going to dislike us regardless.
The Jewelry Store
March 23, 2015 at 2:20 pm
Nice article, It was helpful.
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