Rewriting Ole Miss Racial History

"Baby in the Field" Artwork by M.B. Mayfield 1982

History tells us that The University of Mississippi was integrated in 1962 by James Meredith. But as MPB arts reporter Ron Brown tells us, that history is not the whole story.

Thomas Todd has walked through the Ecru City Hall door as mayor for the past 14 years. Ecru’s a small farming community of over 900 people in northern Pontotoc County. Todd says if you live outside of the area, are interested in art, and know about Ecru, then you probably know about it because of the late M.B. Mayfield, the reclusive folk artist.

“M.B. was very private. He shielded himself against the public, I would say. He was a good fella. A good Christian man, but very private. He’s really helped put Ecru on the map.”

M.B. Mayfield was born in 1923 to sharecroppers and raised in Ecru. But M.B. was always more an artist than a farmer. He taught himself to paint rural scenes of his Mississippi childhood of the 1930’s and 1940’s. And those paintings have since become very collectible, even though they’re hard to find.

“They get calls at the historical society of people looking for his artwork. I know it’s renowned all over the south and as far as Texas and Atlanta, Georgia he had showings there.”

M.B. Mayfield was a talented artist, but because he was poor and mostly kept to himself, it’s unlikely that many people ever would have seen his paintings or heard his name, if not for one simple fact:

“Undeniably M.B. Mayfield was the first black student at Ole Miss.”

David Magee is the author of “The Education of Mr. Mayfield” a new book about how Mayfield attended Ole Miss 13 years before the school was officially and famously integrated by James Meredith.

“He was being taught by professors, he had relationships with students, and he clearly was a student at Ole Miss in 1949.”

Mayfield was a student, but he was not officially enrolled. He needed the help of an art professor, Stuart Purser, who admired Mayfield’s folk art. With the professor’s help, Mayfield walked onto the segregated campus of Ole Miss each day, as a janitor.

“It was just a covert plan of having him be the janitor which he did do janitorial duties but he wasn’t hiring him because he needed a janitor.. he was making him the janitor so he could be taught.”

Getting into the school was only half the battle. Mayfield still couldn’t sit in the classroom. So Mayfield and Purser settled for the only possible arrangement…having Mayfield sit in the broom closet during art class.

“He would teach him by allowing him to take a break and keep the broom closet door open and hear lessons. And he and other professors would work with M.B. Mayfield in the afternoons and after classes.”

That Mayfield the janitor was actually Mayfield the art student was not a well kept secret around Oxford. It had all the makings of a William Faulkner novel. In fact, the Pulitzer Prize winning author was one of Mayfield’s benefactors, buying his art supplies and sending him to Chicago to see a Van Gough exhibit.

This went on for three years until Mayfield had to leave Ole Miss and go back home to Ecru to take care of his ailing mother. He never got a grade. He never received a diploma. But M.B. Mayfield went into Ole a janitor, and came out an artist.

“He turned out to be a good artist, because what Stuart Purser helped M.B. Mayfield to do was understand that the best contribution you can make is truth.”

What Mayfield taught Purser and others is that truth in art is worth telling a little lie to get around segregated admission rules. Mayfield moved to Memphis where he worked at an art gallery for years before returning to Oxford and Ecru as a hometown hero where until 2005 he lived out his life as an artist, and an example to mayor Todd and many others.

“It’s a very interesting story. it’s a story that shows you the hardships that can be endured.”

The experience made artist M.B. Mayfield one of the most accomplished artists ever to come out of the closet at Ole Miss. For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown.