Ole Miss students rally against integration, 1962 (via Associated Press)

This fall marked the 50th anniversary of the “last battle of the Civil War,” the 1962 integration of the University of Mississippi, when President Kennedy sent the National Guard and ultimately the U.S. military into Oxford, Mississippi to force the school to enroll James Meredith, its first African American student. That fall, the Ole Miss football team went undefeated and untied and finished ranked third in the country, and the program hasn’t reached a similar level of success since. 

The history of Meredith’s enrollment and the riots that ensued on a campus that still openly celebrated the Confederacy is one that goes under-taught in history books across the South, and the story of the all-white Ole Miss football team that conquered the Southeastern Conference that fall is one that doesn’t get remembered much by SEC football fans outside Oxford. But ESPN’s Wright Thompson, a Mississippi native, and documentary director Fritz Mitchell captured both stories beautifully — and addressed the past, present, and future of racial relations in Mississippi and at its flagship university — in “Ghosts of Ole Miss,” a documentary in ESPN’s 30 For 30 series, last night.

The hour-long film weaves through the history of Mississippi segregation and racism, and the pride Ole Miss fans take in the school’s football program, up until Meredith’s enrollment, when riots that remain a sore spot for the campus and the community erupted. Football played a role both in exacerbating and alleviating the warfare that took place on the Ole Miss campus. It was at halftime of a football game between Ole Miss and Kentucky that a Nuremberg-like rally broke out when Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett fed off a frenzied, rebel flag-waving crowd and ultimately reneged on a secret deal he had made with the Kennedy brothers to allow Meredith to enroll. It was a football player, Buck Randall, who saw the carnage of the original riots and attempted, to no avail, to stop them. And it was football that both acted as a point of pride for ashamed Mississippians — “We’ve got to show the world that we’re not all bad,” head coach Johnny Vaught told the team before a game against Houston — and highlighted the lack of true equality afforded Meredith, who couldn’t attend football games because of safety concerns.

Despite the connection, though, football and the 1962 Ole Miss team are a mere proxy for the overall story of self-exploration undertaken by Thompson, who wrote in an introductory piece yesterday that he hoped the lesson of “Ghosts of Ole Miss” would be that people from outside Mississippi would see how far it has come, while people from inside Mississippi would see how far the state had to go. Perhaps to an outsider, that seems a convenient narrative, a wishing away of the South’s racist past with a “yes, but” tale of how Mississippi has changed. But as a “southerner” (I’m a native Kentuckian, southern to some, not as much to others) whose native state has its own seminal racial moments in college sports, Thompson’s inner struggle with the history of his home state and its home school felt familiar. It is a struggle felt by anyone who is proud to be where they’re from but who has waded into our history, anyone who has resisted Southern tradition and conformity on racial issues or any other. It is a struggle felt by anyone who is constantly reminded by the inside world that we want to change too fast and by the outside world that we are not changing fast enough.

That struggle is apparent today on the Ole Miss campus, where the Confederate flags are gone but the Confederate statues remain; where the school has abandoned Colonel Reb but still uses the “Rebels” nickname that was spawned by the students who left to join the Confederate army in 1862; where students elected a black student body president this year but the band still plays “Dixie,” the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy, during football games.

Those are conflicts Thompson addresses, and they are complicated. There are moments of reflection from players from the 1962 team (“I’m appalled that we treated another human being that way,” one admits. “You sit by, and you wonder why.”) and there are moments of introspection about the present from Thompson himself. “I like ‘Dixie’ too,” he says near the end of the film, “even as I know how it must sound to black Mississippians. It’s hard to reconcile these thoughts.”

But you can feel the pain of truth in Thompson’s narration as he says it: it may be hard to reconcile those thoughts, but to continue, we must. “There are questions Mississippians won’t ask because we’re not prepared to hear the answer,” Thompson says. And as much as his story is about Mississippi, it is really about us all. Without those answers and the exploration it takes to find them, from Mississippians, Southerners, and Americans in general, it will always be impossible to reconcile the ghosts of our past with the promises of our future.

O Brother Where Art Thou – Man Of Constant Sorrow

O Brother Where Art Thou film movie comedy 2000 George Clooney John Turturro John Goodman Holly Hunter

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Wikipedia notes:

History

There is some uncertainty whether Dick Burnett himself wrote the song. One claim is that it was sung by the Mackin clan in 1888 in Ireland and that Cameron O’Mackin emigrated to Tennessee, brought the song with him, and performed it. In an interview he gave toward the end of his life, Burnett himself indicated that he could not remember:

Charles Wolfe: “What about this “Farewell Song” – ‘I am a man of constant sorrow’ – did you write it?”
Richard Burnett: “No, I think I got the ballad from somebody – I dunno. It may be my song…”^[1]

If Burnett wrote the song, the date of its composition, or at least of the editing of certain lyrics by Burnett, can be fixed at about 1913. Since it is known that Burnett was born in 1883, married in 1905, and blinded in 1907, the dating of two of these texts can be made on the basis of internal evidence. The second stanza of “Farewell Song” mentions that the singer has been blind six years, which put the date at 1913. According to the Country Music Annual, Burnett “probably tailored a pre-existing song to fit his blindness” and may have adapted a hymn. Charles Wolfe argues that “Burnett probably based his melody on an old Baptist hymn called “Wandering Boy”.^[2]

During 1918, Cecil Sharp collected the song and published it as “In Old Virginny” (Sharp II, 233).

Sarah Ogan Gunning’s re-writing of the traditional “Man” into a more personal “Girl” took place about 1936 in New York, where her first husband, Andrew Ogan, was fatally ill. The text was descriptive of loneliness away from home and anticipated her bereavement; the melody she remembered from a 78 rpm hillbilly record (Emry Arthur, probably Vocalion Vo 5208, 1928) she had heard some years before in the mountains.

On October 13, 2009 on the Diane Rehm Show, Dr. Ralph Stanley of the Stanley Brothers, born in 1927, discussed the song, its origin, and his effort to revive it:^[3]

“Man of Constant Sorrow” is probably two or three hundred years old. But the first time I heard it when I was y’know, like a small boy, my daddy – my father – he had some of the words to it, and I heard him sing it, and we – my brother and me – we put a few more words to it, and brought it back in existence. I guess if it hadn’t been for that it’d have been gone forever. I’m proud to be the one that brought that song back, because I think it’s wonderful.”

Stanley’s autobiography is titled Man of Constant Sorrow.^[4]

[edit] Recordings and cover versions

The embedded lists in this article may contain items that are not encyclopedic. Please help out by removing such elements and incorporating appropriate items into the main body of the article. (January 2011)

• 1928 – The song was recorded in 1928 by Emry Arthur.
• 1951 – It was popularized by the Stanley Brothers, on Columbia 20816, Recorded: Nov. 3, 1950, Released: May 1951.
• 1959 – The Stanley Brothers re-recorded it on King Records 45-5269, Recorded: Sep. 15, 1959, Released: Oct. 1959. This version is probably the first with a very similar vocal arrangement as the one used in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, where it is performed by the fictitious group Soggy Bottom Boys (recorded by Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, and Pat Enright).
• 1960 – A version of the song, “Girl of Constant Sorrow”, is included on the remastered version of the album Joan Baez, first released in 1960 on the Vanguard label.^[5]
• 1961 – Recorded by Roscoe Holcomb (Daisy Kentucky) in 1961–1962 with an arrangement more like Dylan’s than that of the Stanleys.(Music of Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward,Smithsonian Folkways, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.)
• 1961 – Judy Collins‘s 1961 debut album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, took its name from a variant of the song that was performed on the album.
• 1962 – It appears on Bob Dylan‘s 1962 eponymous debut album and Dylan performed the song during his first national television appearance in 1963.
• 1962 – In their 1962 self-titled debut album Peter, Paul and Mary recorded another version as “Sorrow.”
• 1966 – It was recorded by Waylon Jennings on his 1966 major-label debut Folk-Country.
• 1969 – Rod Stewart performed the song on his debut solo album in 1969.
• 1970 – It was also recorded by Ginger Baker’s Air Force on their eponymous debut album in 1970, sung by Air Force guitarist and vocalist (and former Moody Blues, future Wings member) Denny Laine. The band used the same melody, and for the most part the same lyrics (but substituted ‘Birmingham’ for ‘Colorado’). The arrangement differed, though, as this was a loosely improvised live version, with violin and saxophones, that stays very much in the major scales of A, D and E, unlike its future bluesier brethren. It was the only band single; it charted #36 on the U.S. country charts and #86 in UK.
• 1972 – An a cappella version appears on The Dillards‘ 1972 LP Roots and Branches.
• 1972 – Some of the lyrics were used verbatim in the Rolling Stones song “Let It Loose” from the 1972 LP Exile on Main St.
• 1993 – “Man of Constant Sorrow” was one of many songs recorded by Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, and Tony Rice one weekend in February 1993. Jerry’s taped copy of the session was later stolen by his pizza delivery man, eventually became an underground classic, and finally edited and released in 2000 as The Pizza Tapes.^{[citation needed]} Jerry Garcia also sang an a cappella version on June 11, 1962, at the Jewish Community Center in San Carlos, California, with the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers.^{[citation needed]} Though unreleased, it has been widely circulated among traders at least since the 1980s.^{[citation needed]}
• 2000 – Jackson Browne and Irish accordionist Sharon Shannon recorded their version of the song in 2000. It also appeared in Shannon’s album The Diamond Mountain Sessions.
• 2000 – The song appears in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, under the title “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow.” Performed by the fictitious Soggy Bottom Boys in the movie, it was recorded by Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, and Pat Enright. It was a hit in the movie for the Soggy Bottom Boys and later became a hit single in real life. It received a CMA for “Single of the Year” and a Grammy for “Best Country Collaboration with Vocals” and it peaked at #35 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. Dan Tyminski performed this song at the Crossroads Guitar Festival with Ron Block and live with Alison Krauss. The version used in the film is closest in lyrics and singing style to Ralph Stanley’s.
• 2000– The folk group Donna the Buffalo did a reggae-influenced cover on their album Positive Friction.
• 2001 – A version entitled “Soul of Constant Sorrow” appears on the 2001 album Mountain Soul by country singer Patty Loveless.
• 2003 – In 2003, musicians Skeewiff remixed “Man of Constant Sorrow.” The song was so popular in Australia that it featured at #96 in the Triple J’s hottest 100 songs of 2003. That same year, the O Brother Where Art Thou? version of the song ranked #20 in CMT’s 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music.
• 2006 – Osaka Popstar recorded a punk rock cover of this song for their debut album Osaka Popstar and the American Legends of Punk.
• 2007 – Canadian hard rock group Tin Foil Phoenix released it on their 2007 second album Age of Vipers as a bonus track.
• 2009 – Norwegian all-girl pop band Katzenjammer covered the song briefly in their 2009 US tour.^{[citation needed]}
• 2011 – The John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble covered the song at the Newport Jazz Festival^[6]
• 2012 – The hard-rock band Charm City Devils released a video of their cover of the song on their YouTube channel.^[7] The lyric video video was a montage of images and footage from old black and white movies over which were superimposed the song’s lyrics in an ornate but damaged font consistent with the band’s branding.
• 2012 – The poet and rapper George Watsky released a cover/remix of the song on his YouTube channel.^[8] The video shows similar themes to the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?. This version of the song adds hip-hop elements (such as Watsky’s rapping for the verse).