Ole Miss football coach Houston Nutt, quoted in a Monday story in The Clarion-Ledger newspaper, said eight recruits scheduled to visit the Oxford campus for the Nov. 21 Ole Miss win over LSU backed out because of the presence of the Ku Klux Klan on campus.

The Mississippi White Knights of the KKK were protesting a decision made by Ole Miss chancellor Dan Jones to have the school’s marching band drop the pep song “From Dixie With Love” from being played at football games. The tune, which combined “Dixie” with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” ended with some fans chanting, “The South will rise again,” instead of, “His truth is marching on.”

The Klan claimed it was protesting against lost Southern symbolism.

Sean P. Murphy is Web editor. He can be reached at smurphy@vicksburgpost.com.

A dozen klan members, shrouded in cloaks of ignorance, paraded around for a mere 10 minutes, waving flags and Nazi-style salutes. They were outnumbered at least 20-1, depending on which crowd estimate to one refers.

A photo that ran in The Vicksburg Post showed a crowd shouting down the Klan. The majority of those standing in protest were white, one was black and one appeared to be Asian. Some pointed and jeered, some heckled and others took pictures of the dinosaur on the brink of extinction that is the KKK.

The eight recruits who did not attend the game because of the Klan missed one great opportunity to look at the Southern symbolism in 2009. Those eight would have seen the crowds united against those cloaked in robes of hatred. They would have seen the throngs of people communicating in unison: “You are not us. You are not welcome here any more.” They would have seen how far Ole Miss has come.

Forty-seven years ago, a violent uprising on campus led to two deaths as members of the Klan and other divisive outlets protested the admittance of James Meredith, the first black student at Ole Miss. It took nearly half a century, but those standing behind the barricades berating the messengers of ignorance showed not only how far they have come, but also that such activities will not happen again.

For a state that gets beaten up routinely on race relations, what a statement those 240 or so made on an overcast Saturday afternoon in Oxford.

Those recruits, wherever they end up playing college football, will one day have as much regret for staying at home as the 12 irrelevants in robes will have for not staying at home.