In Mississippi, a chance to turn the page on race

OXFORD, Mississippi (Reuters) - For the University of Mississippi, Barack Obama's scheduled campus appearance in a presidential debate on Friday is more than ironic. It's a testament to progress.

The deep South campus, commonly known as Ole Miss, was the site of a deadly 1962 riot over the court-ordered enrollment of the first black student, James Meredith. The clash with federal troops sent by President John Kennedy became a landmark moment in the U.S. civil rights movement.

The state became the epicenter of the national battle over rights for blacks in the United States, and the murder of three civil-rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 helped spur passage in Congress of a law forbidding racial segregation in schools, employment and public places.

More than four decades later, the university is scheduled to host the first presidential debate involving a black nominee of a major party when Democrat Obama faces Republican rival John McCain on Friday.

The debate was still uncertain on Thursday, with McCain threatening to skip the event in order to participate in negotiations on a $700 billion bailout of U.S. financial institutions.

But debate organizers say it will go on, and university officials hope it will offer a chance to update the campus's image and show a new face to more than 3,000 journalists descending on Oxford from around the world.

"The position we have taken is to be very upfront, very direct and very honest about the history of the state and the school," said Chancellor Robert Khayat, an alumni and former football player at Mississippi.

"We've recognized the failures of the past but we have focused on our successes in the present and the future," he said. "We are a fully integrated, diverse, modern, progressive school."

Blacks now comprise 14 percent of the student body, and the campus features a civil rights monument that includes a statue of Meredith.

'THEY KNOW THE ISSUE'

On campus, Khayat helped to institute new rules in 1997 that effectively banned the display of most Confederate flags at football games, sparking a heated battle with traditionalists.

"That was probably the most emotional issue we have had to deal with here," he said. The school also honored the surviving federal soldiers who helped quell the 1962 riot.

"We're 40 years away from all that," Khayat said. "Every school has challenges, but Mississippi has the additional challenge of all that history."

The state is strongly Republican in presidential politics. More than three-quarters of the white vote in Mississippi is expected to go to McCain and more than 90 percent of the black vote to Obama.

"Obama's participation in a debate at Oxford is symbolic of the new openness of the South," said Merle Black, an expert on Southern politics at Emory University in Atlanta. "But the reality is that voting in Mississippi, like elsewhere in the South, will be highly polarized by race."

No one knew Obama, an Illinois senator, would be the Democratic nominee when the university began preparing its debate bid years ago. The university has spent about $5 million on upgrades for the debate.

"I think the irony of having the James Meredith event in 1962 contrasted with the first African-American presidential nominee on stage here is amazing," he said.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)