October 2, 2020
Dear Oxford Supervisors and Board of Aldermen,
My husband and I are residents of Oxford, both retired electrical engineers and jazz/blues musicians. We’re both naturalized citizens who came to the States from England in 1986, headhunted by GE to work in their research center in Syracuse, NY, followed by professorships at the University of New Mexico. We moved to Oxford six years ago to be part of the music scene here.
Back in the late 60s and the 70s when I was a student at the University of Nottingham in England, we were all following the civil rights movement very closely, and marching in support of it. We were reading James Baldwin, George Jackson and others detailing the reality of black life in America, deeply moved and really excited to see the beginnings of change. When we moved to America, we thought that there had been profound change; over our 35 years in America we have come to realize how deep the roots of systemic racism are here, particularly since we moved to Mississippi.
This year I have seen the possibility of change again. I ask you to help in that by voting to remove the confederate statue from the Square. I have already left you several phone messages to that effect, although these received no response.
That statue was erected in 1907, a generation after the Civil War, along with a rash of similar statues erected then. It’s not a coincidence that at the same time Jim Crow laws were being enacted against recently freed slaves.
To us, the statue is a symbol of white supremacy; certainly that’s how our black friends experience it. Friends and family visiting us (from England, New Zealand, Australia and France) have also remarked how shocked they were to see symbols such as that statue, and confederate flags, displayed so prominently.
We’ve removed the confederate icon from the Mississippi flag – let’s remove the statue from the Square. Please!
Regards,
Kirsty Mills (Dr) and Steve Hersee (Dr), Oxford residents and local musicians