William Faulkner wrote it, Joseph Pulitzer and Alfred Nobel confirmed it, “…the Center, the Focus, the Hub…,” is universal and we southern humans take comfort in the presence of the great structures, built by our forefathers, that anchored our childhoods, defined our pride of citizenship and have always commanded our respect. Every Ole Miss Rebel who ever lived, when stripped of all we have, finds that our lifelong respect stands, and our dying respect lies, at our core, on the grounds at 34°21’53″N & 89°32’18″W…The Lyceum.
Before The Grove was a grove; before Hemingway, much less Vaught was born; when the first echoes of the first Hotty Toddy were many decades down the road and University Avenue was a wagon-width dirt road.
In Washington, D. C., Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis first met each other as freshman Congressmen. And just outside of the little town of Oxford, Mississippi, we were building The Lyceum. We have been building a special American history story, brick by brick, from those days forward.