|In this Oct. 2, 1962 photo, students crowded the car carrying
James Meredith to the University of Mississippi campus in
Oxford. He had to be escorted by the National Guard and US
marshals. (Associated Press/File)| For Ole Miss, presidential
debate marks racial progress School tries to overcome history of
segregation OXFORD, Miss. - Two generations ago, bullets flew
and tear gas canisters exploded among the magnolias as
segregationists fought federal authorities over the court-
ordered admission of the first black student to the University
of Mississippi. It was the flagship school in what was then the
most defiantly white supremacist state in the union. Now, Ole
Miss is a diverse university where racial conflict is a topic
for history classes, not a fact of everyday life, and it is
hosting the first presidential debate featuring a black nominee
for a major party. "I think what we have here is really a
confluence of two lines of history, where you have a new Ole
Miss, a postracial Ole Miss, and you have a post