Ole Miss Students Hold Tickets to Inauguration

The inauguration festivities will begin in a few hours’ time in the nation’s capital today. MPB’s Sandra Knispel reports from Oxford on a group that has front-row seats to history.

It’s shortly after 8 am, Saturday morning. In Oxford, a group of five students and the director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi are loading up a minivan to head north.

“I do not like the cold. I don’t know how to dress for this. I’ve brought tons of sweaters, sweater coats and I’ve brought suits and a gorgeous purple shirt for the inauguration," said Nickolaus Luckett.

Luckett from Drew is a public policy and classics student. The African American, who is an intern at the Winter Institute, voted in November for the first time.

"I didn’t think I was going to see it in my lifetime. So, it’s really cool that something that I thought was never going to happen – happened before I was even 20. It’s amazing,” Luckett added.

The Institute’s director, Dr. Susan Glisson, had written to Mississippi’s senators right after the election asking for inauguration tickets.

“The stone that the builders rejected is now about to lead the nation and I want to be there," Glisson said. Because in 1619 the first Africans who came to this country came not free. And until 1965 roughly their skin color determined their citizenship.”

The Institute’s namesake, former Mississippi Governor William Winter, also holds a ticket. For him it’s not a first.

“I went to the Jimmy Carter inauguration, I went to the Reagan inauguration, and to both of the Clinton inaugurations," Winter remembers.

Winter who has worked much of his political life to overcome racial inequities, never expected to see an African-American president in his lifetime.

“The inauguration will serve as almost a validating ceremony for those of us who look forward to a country where we don’t judge people on the basis of race,” Winter said.

The group will be seated in front of the Capitol. They are planning on arriving before daybreak to get prime seats, hoping their brand new thermal underwear and their excitement will keep them warm with temperatures hovering in the 30s. In Oxford, for MPB News I’m Sandra Knispel.