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The Education of Mr. Mayfield: An Unusual Story of Social Change at Ole Miss
by David Magee

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Praise for The Education of Mr. Mayfield

"More than a decade before the University of Mississippi, a.k.a. Ole Miss, admitted its first black student, the friendship between a white art professor and a black artist quietly transcended the region’s deeply-held policy of racist segregation; columnist and Ole Miss alumnus Magee (The South is Round) charts this aberrant relationship, between University professor Stuart Purser and untrained artist M.B. Mayfield, a reticent, impoverished sharecropper who fed his endless drive to paint by extracting hues from flowers and vegetables. In 1949, initially attracted by the art and sculptures adorning Mayfield’s yard, Purser daringly invites Mayfield to work as a janitor at Ole Miss and take clandestine art lessons from him. (Even Oxford resident William Faulkner contributes to the cause, offering money for Mayfield’s art supplies.) Perhaps most remarkable is the endurance of Mayfield’s career through the enormous social upheaval of desegregation: Ole Miss’s first black student, admitted in 1962, drew an angry mob armed with “brickbats, sticks, and homemade firebombs.” Paralleling that pioneering student’s career with Mayfield’s, Magee illuminates the debate over discrimination, its hard-line adherents, and the heroes who defied it in a narrative sure to please historians, civil rights scholars and anyone looking for a heartwarming and entirely honest story of the Old South. B&w and color photos."
Publishers Weekly

"David Magee's The Education of Mr. Mayfield is a moving tribute to a courageous artist who overcame racial barriers. M. B. Mayfield's life and work offer a rare window on Mississippi worlds through the eyes of an artist who knew them well."
Dr. William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-Chapel Hill and founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss

"Once in a great while, a story begs to be told—and The Education of Mr. Mayfield is certainly one of those rare treats. Colorful and heartfelt, Mr. Mayfield is a well-crafted story about dignified men who, in the face of savage racism in 1940s Mississippi, initiated their own clandestine desegregation of Ole Miss nearly fifteen years before the now-famous riots. A marvelous reminder of the power behind quiet acts of kindness."
Neil White, author of In the Sanctuary of Outcasts

"In telling this story, Magee reminds all of us that in the darkest times there are men and women willing to step through the door and into the light. The Education of Mr. Mayfield is a wonderful tale of the triumph of goodness."
Robert Hicks, author of The Widow of the South