Oxford Blues

One of the earliest documenters of Lafayette County's Black music was a white student. Howard Odum, later a prominent sociologist, studied classics at the University of Mississippi and spent a great deal of time recording African American musicians. While teaching, he collected folk songs and lore for two dissertations, published as studies of religious traits in the songs and of Black social life. He went on to found the University of North Carolina Press and the journal Social Forces, and to serve as assistant director of research for President Hoover's committee on social trends.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Oxford Square — steps away
  The courthouse square laid out in 1837 on land bought from a Chickasaw woman, rebuilt after the 1864 burning and home to Square Books and a memorial to Lafayette County's lynching victims.
• Rowan Oak — 0.6 mi
  William Faulkner's Greek Revival house in Oxford, bought in 1930 and kept by the University of Mississippi, with the outline of A Fable still written on his study wall.
• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 1.0 mi
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.
• Sardis Lake and Dam — 16 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.

More markers nearby

• St. Peter's (1851), Episcopal — steps away
• Burns "Belfry" Church — 0.2 mi
• Delta Gamma Fraternity — 0.2 mi
• Freedmen Town — 0.3 mi