Oxford was taken by Union Army soldiers under Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman during the American Civil War in 1862, and in 1864, Major General Andrew Jackson Smith set fire to the town square structures, including the county courthouse. The community steadily rebuilt after Reconstruction, with the help of federal judge Robert Andrews Hill, who helped arrange money for a new courthouse in 1872.

Many African American freedmen migrated into town during this time and founded “Freedmen Town,” a neighborhood where they erected houses, shops, churches, and schools, as well as exercising all of their citizenship rights. Mississippi continues to be a source of controversy.

The Ole Miss riot of 1962 attracted national notice during the Civil Rights Movement. Even after federal courts decided that he should be allowed, state officials, including Governor Ross Barnett, prohibited James Meredith, an African American, from enrolling at the University of Mississippi. President John F. Kennedy authorized 127 US Marshals, 316 deputized US Border Patrol agents, and 97 federalized Federal Bureau of Prisons officials to follow Meredith after private face-saving discussions with Barnett. Hundreds of thousands of armed “volunteers” descended on Oxford. Meredith arrived at Oxford under military escort to register, but segregationist riots erupted in response to his admission.

3,000 rioters set fire to automobiles, showered federal law police with rocks, stones, and small weapons fire, and destroyed university property that night. Two bystanders were murdered as a result of gunshot wounds, and the disturbance extended to other parts of Oxford. With the arrival of 3,000 nationalized Mississippi National Guard and federal troops who slept in the city early in the morning, order was ultimately restored to the university. On September 26, 2008, about 3,000 journalists descended on Oxford to cover the first presidential debate of the year, which was hosted at the University of Mississippi.