Oxford Eagle (Oxford, Lafayette Co., Miss.) 1876-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,630 issues from 1876 to 1922, published in Oxford, Mississippi, digitised for Chronicling America.
Lafayette County is located in the rolling hills of north central Mississippi, ancestral homeland of the Chickasaw. The county seat, Oxford, was named after the college town in England in the hope of becoming the site of the state’s first public institution of higher learning. Three years after incorporation in 1837, Oxford was chosen as the home of the University of Mississippi, which opened its doors to students in 1848. Oxford became known as a cultural center due, in part, to the university as well as to the many authors who made it their home.
Veteran Samuel Moore Thompson moved to Oxford after the Civil War and founded the Oxford Falcon (1865-88?). In 1876, Thompson sold the Falcon and by 1879 owned a competing four-page weekly, the Oxford Eagle (1876-current). His uncompromising southern Democrat ideals were reflected in the newspaper’s early motto, “White Men must rule our Country.” Thompson’s brother, Victor, edited the short-lived Oxford Weekly Ricochet (1874-18??), the rival Republican newspaper. Samuel Thompson was shot to death in 1883, while in custody for intoxication. With the help of skilled writers, his wife, Eliza, successfully ran the Eagle for another 32 years. Shortly after purchasing the Eagle from Eliza in 1915, George W. Price also bought the Lafayette County Press (1906-15); he expanded the merged paper from four to eight pages. The Oxford Eagle is still published in 2020 as a daily.
For the first 50 years, the Eagle was devoted to politics,…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Oxford, Mississippi, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress