history for a single disturbance. Meredith enrolled and attended a class on October 1. By 1968, Ole Miss had around 100 African American students, and by the 2019–2020 academic year, African Americans constituted 12.5 percent of the student body.
=== Recent history ===
In 1972, Ole Miss purchased Rowan Oak, the former home of Nobel Prize–winning writer William Faulkner. The building has been preserved as it was at Faulkner's death in 1962. Faulkner was the university's postmaster in the early 1920s and wrote As I Lay Dying (1930) at the university powerhouse. His Nobel Prize medallion is displayed in the university library. The university hosted the inaugural Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in 1974. In 1980, Willie Morris became the university's first writer in residence.
In 2002, Ole Miss marked the 40th anniversary of integration with a yearlong series of events, including an oral history of the university, symposiums, a memorial, and a reunion of federal marshals who served at the campus. In 2006, …
