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More than a decade before the media reported on the disturbing events surrounding James Meredith's enrollment at the University of Mississippi in 1962, a different story of interaction between the races was quietly taking place on that same campus. The Education of Mr. Mayfield describes the friendship between the school's first art department chairman, Stuart Purser, and the artist, M.B. Mayfield. Purser offered Mayfield a job as a custodian and secretly gave the artist one-on-one art lessons and arranged for classroom doors to be open so Mayfield could listen to class lectures, while sitting in the nearby broom closet. The Education of Mr. Mayfield tells the story of how M.B. Mayfield overcame many of the obstacles placed in his way by racism, but it also tells of the quiet acts of courage displayed by some white Southerners who found ways to defy the injustices of that time and place.