Charlie Conerly

The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi, United States. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as... well as the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. It also operates the University of Mississippi Field Station in Abbeville. Additionally, it is both a sea-grant and space-grant institute. Sixty-nine percent of undergraduates are from Mississippi and nineteen percent of all students are minorities. International students come from sixty-six nations. Ole Miss is a large university in the state of Mississippi with a total enrollment of 20,844 in fall 2011. The Oxford campus is the second largest main campus in the state with a fall 2011 enrollment of 16,586. The Mississippi Legislature chartered Ole Miss on February 24, 1844. The university opened its doors to its first class of 80 students four years later in 1848. For 23 years, Ole Miss was Mississippi's only public institution of higher learning, and for 110 years it was the state's only comprehensive university.
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Clarksdale is a city in Coahoma County, Mississippi. The population was 20,645 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Coahoma County. It is mostly known for its significance in the history of the blues. Clarksdale was named in honor of founder and resident John Clark, brother-in-law of... politician James Lusk Alcorn, whose plantation home is nearby. In the early 20th century, Clarksdale was known as the "Golden Buckle in the Cotton Belt" and was home to a multi-cultural mixture of Lebanese, Italian, Chinese and Jewish immigrant merchants along with African-Americans farm laborers and white plantation owners. Clarksdale figured prominently in the regional agricultural landscape and became pre-eminent when the International Harvester Company perfected the development of the single row mechanical cotton picking machine at the nearby Hopson Plantation in 1946. This technological advancement quickly revolutionized American agriculture and had far-reaching economic and social implications for the cotton industry worldwide, particularly in the Mississippi Delta.
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