Editing Trent Lott (section)

==Early life==
Lott was born in [[Grenada, Mississippi]], and lived his early years in nearby [[Duck Hill, Mississippi|Duck Hill]], where his father, Chester Paul Lott, sharecropped a stretch of cotton field. Lott's mother, the former Iona Watson, was a schoolteacher. Lott's father was a philanderer with a drinking problem, and Lott frequently acted as a mediator when his mother threatened his father with divorce.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oU2cm1bOIGIC&q=divorce |title=Herding Cats: A Life in Politics |isbn=9780060599317 |last1=Lott |first1=Tren |date=August 23, 2005|publisher=Harper Collins }}</ref> When Lott was in the sixth grade, the family moved to [[Pascagoula, Mississippi|Pascagoula]], where Lott's father worked at a shipyard.<ref>{{cite news |title=Iona Watson Lott (Obituary) |newspaper=Rome News-Tribune |date=July 12, 2005 |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=W-QyAAAAIBAJ&pg=4253%2C3521995}}</ref>

Lott attended college at the [[University of Mississippi]] in [[Oxford, Mississippi|Oxford]], where he obtained an undergraduate degree in [[public administration]] in 1963 and a [[Juris doctor]] degree in 1967. He served as a field representative for Ole Miss and was president of his fraternity, [[Sigma Nu]]. Lott was also an Ole Miss cheerleader, on the same team with future U.S. Senator [[Thad Cochran]].<ref name="wapo1">{{cite news|title=Two From Ole Miss, Hitting It Big |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/olemiss010799.htm|first=Linton|last=Weeks|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=January 8, 1999}}</ref> At the time that Lott was president, the Sigma Nu fraternity house was raided by the troops from the [[716th Military Police Battalion|716th Battalion]] during the "[[Ole Miss riot of 1962|Battle of Oxford]]". They discovered a sizeable weapon cache.<ref>[[#Doyle|Doyle (2001)]], p. 281.</ref>

Regarding his education, the ''[[Congressional Record]]'' from 1999 quotes Senator Lott declaring: "I am a product of public education from the first grade through the second, third, and fourth grades where I went to school at Duck Hill, Mississippi, and I had better teachers in the second, third, and fourth grades in Duck Hill, Mississippi, than I had the rest of my life."<ref>{{cite web |title=Reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 |website=[[Congressional Record]] |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|year=1999|url=http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRECB-1999-pt16/html/CRECB-1999-pt16-Pg22592-4.htm}}</ref>

While an undergraduate at the University of Mississippi, Lott participated in the effort at the 1964 national convention of the [[Sigma Nu]] fraternity to oppose a [[Civil Rights Movement|civil rights]] amendment proposed by the [[Dartmouth College]] and [[Duke University]] chapters to end mandatory racial exclusion by the fraternity. Lott sided with the [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregationists]] who defeated the amendment. The Dartmouth chapter subsequently seceded from the fraternity, and Sigma Nu remained whites-only until later in the decade.<ref>{{cite news|last=Sweet|first=Kimberly|title=Duke frat alumni recall taking anti-segregation stand Sen. Lott's role renews interest in '64 Sigma Nu vote|newspaper=The Durham Herald Sun|date=December 18, 2002}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399310,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021213014801/http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399310,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=December 13, 2002 |magazine=Time |first=Karen |last=Tumulty |title=Trent Lott's Segregationist College Days |date=December 12, 2002}}</ref>