designers referred to Better Homes and Gardens as the Golden Millstone. It made all the money but it hung around your neck and all the higher ups in the company paid constant attention to it.” Autry transitioned to be head of the magazine group, working to develop new magazines for the brand. “When I took the magazine group, we had four magazines, and when I left, we had 17,” he said. “That was all through good people working on a volunteer basis to start those magazines. I had to take that money out of my budget, but it worked very well for Meredith. To have done that and to now look what they’re doing and their success is an awesome feeling for me.” Autry still takes note of Meredith’s successes and is proud of how far the company has come. “Meredith, which used to be the sleepy little Midwest company publishing your mother’s magazine is now probably one of the top, if not the top magazine company in the country,” he said. “Having been down there and been treated for years as sort of the country bumpkin or the stepchild of the magazine business, it’s really something to see Meredith emerge the way it is, having been a part of it.”
James Autry served as the 1954 managing editor of the Mississippian, the student-run newspaper. According to the 1954 Ole Miss yearbook, he was known as Jimmy “Punchline” Autry and wrote columns about “women’s clothes, women’s makeup and a sensational report on the “General Behavior of the Ole Miss Female.” PHOTO COURTESY | THE OLE MISS YEARBOOK
1953 Renovations on the Lafayette County courthouse on the Square were completed. The courthouse has long been the center of Oxford’s Square.
1954 Brown v. Board of Education rules segregation in public education illegal. Ole Miss would not integrate until James Meredith’s 1962 enrollment.
1955 Ole Miss expands to Jackson with the opening of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the state’s first four-year medical school.
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