The Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans will be holding the “Official State of Mississippi Confederate Soldiers’ Memorial Service” in Oxford on Saturday, April 25, 2015.
The service will be held at 1:30 pm at the Confederate Cemetery on the Ole Miss campus, just behind Tad Smith Coliseum.
The local “University Grays” chapter of Sons of Confederate Veterans has held a yearly memorial service at Ole Miss on the first Sunday in May for many years.
However, this year the State Chapter decided to get involved and hold a statewide memorial in Oxford to coincide with the 150th Anniversary of the end of the Civil War.
Because Confederate Memorial Day is an official state holiday in Mississippi on the last Monday of every April, the state SCV holds the statewide memorial on the last Saturday in April.
The event should be larger than usual, and it is being held on one of the busiest days of the year in Oxford, during Double Decker Festival.
The Confederate Memorial Service will feature a bagpipe procession with reenactors, live music by Alan Sibley & The Magnolia Ramblers featuring songs from the Civil War, as well as speakers Jon Rawl, Larry Mardis, Rev. James Taylor, and others to be announced.
The Confederate Cemetery at Ole Miss is the final resting place of over 1,000 Confederate soldiers, most of whom were wounded at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6-8, 1862. The wounded were shipped by train from Corinth and received care at the University of Mississippi, which served as a hospital during the Civil War.
The City of Oxford was occupied twice during the Civil War, once in December of 1862 by approximately 40,000 Union Troops commanded by General Ulysses S. Grant, and also in August of 1864, by Union troops commanded by General Andrew Jackson Smith, who burned down the town.
See the videos below for scenes from previous Confederate Memorial services at Ole Miss. 
