NOTE: This chapter is copyrighted. No not duplicate in any way.

Strongly suggest you buy the book it is a part of if you are a Mississippian: Mississippi Government and Politics: Modernizers versus Traditionalists, by Dale Krane and Stephen D. Shaffer, University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

Chapter Two

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The Origins and Evolution of a Traditionalistic Society

Stephen D. Shaffer

Dale Krane

"... when a black Jacksonian looks about his home community, he sees a city where Negro citizens are refused admittance to the city auditorium and the coliseum; his wife and children refused service in a downtown store where they trade; students refused the use of the main library, parks, and other tax-supported recreational facilities... He sees a city of over 150,000, of which 40 percent is Negro, in which there is not a single Negro policeman or policewoman, school crossing guard, or fireman..."--Medgar Evers, NAACP state field secretary, 1963.¹

"We deeply regret what happened here 25 years ago. We wish we could undo it... We are profoundly sorry they are gone. Every decent person in Philadelphia and Neshoba County and Mississippi feels exactly that way."--Secretary of State and Philadelphia native Dick Molpus at a 1989 ceremony in Philadelphia honoring slain civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.²

Mississippi's political culture has historically been a traditionalistic one, characterized by a hierarchical political and social system with established upper-class families motivated to preserve the status quo. A critical source of the state's traditionalistic political culture was the old plantation system, which was based on the subjugation of black slaves and the subsequent political dominance of Delta planters over poor white farmers.

The Ante-Bellum Era

The original settlers of the state having a European heritage were of Anglo-Saxon ethnic background and had lived in other southern states, particularly Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.³ Some settled in the Natchez region. The city of Natchez, located on the Mississippi River, was the first major city in the state. The Natchez planters with their ties to French culture in New Orleans were aristocratic slave owners and intellectuals, who had been educated in eastern colleges and abroad. They therefore employed private tutors and provided out-of-state educations for their children. Settlers in the eastern part of the state generally did not own slaves, and many were of a lower socioeconomic class who found themselves farming less productive land. Prior to the Civil War, the Natchez planter class dominated state government, and used state funds to promote their financial position. Mississippi's traditional reluctance to support public schools originated at this time, as these planters were unwilling to support public schools that they did not utilize.⁴

The plantation system began in the river counties of the Natchez area, and then spread into northern and central Mississippi, making Mississippi one of the major plantation states of the region. The 1830s was a boom period in cotton production, and by 1860 slaves constituted 55 percent of the state's population. Hence, strong police measures were used to control the slave population. For example, it was illegal for slaves to be taught to read and write, to use abusive language toward whites, to testify against whites in court, and to buy and sell items without permission from their master. In 1831 a state law encouraged free blacks to leave the state, and in 1857 white masters were prohibited from freeing their slaves.

A historian of the antebellum era in Mississippi provides a nice summary of the state's traditionalistic political order: "state government rarely interfered in the lives of its citizens, concerning itself primarily with the problems and maintenance of the cotton economy. Keeping credit fluid, easing transportation difficulties, and regulating and protecting slavery were the accepted functions of the legislative and administrative branches of the state... When the state became involved in the lives of Mississippians, however, it did so to uphold law and the existing social order rather than to effect social change. In 1848, for example, the state treasury paid out more to reimburse slaveholders for executed slaves than for a vaccination program, the school for the blind, and the Chickasaw Indian school combined."⁵

Unexpectedly, slavery had a negative long-term effect on the state's economic strength. This repressive social system retarded the development of a home market, thereby inhibiting industrialization and economic diversification and hindering the state's economic development into the 20th century. By using slaves rather than hiring free laborers, white immigration was discouraged, so the construction of transportation facilities, schools, and urban centers was hindered.⁶ Manual labor was held in low esteem, and even white artisans and craftsmen received little compensation for their skills and products.⁷

Class differences among white Mississippians led to a competitive two party system prior to the Civil War. The Federalists, who nationally constituted the more elitist and pro-business party, were popular among wealthy plantation families in Mississippi and among Natchez merchants and bankers. The 1817 state constitution, which included a tax payment requirement for voting and a property ownership requirement for holding office, was written largely by the Natchez elite. Most Mississippi planters were not yet financially established, so they supported the more egalitarian Democratic-Republicans of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr. The state as a whole was a fairly Democratic-Republican state.

As the Federalist party withered away across the nation, the Democratic-Republican party nationally became more aristocratic in its policies. Many Mississippians resented the eastern rule of the Virginia Dynasty presidents and the undemocratic congressional "King Caucus" that nominated presidential candidates. When the popular war hero, General Andrew Jackson, sought the presidency, Mississippians flocked to his banner. The wave of Jacksonian democracy in the state led to the 1832 constitution, which abolished tax payment requirements for voting and property holding requirements for public office, and provided for the popular election of all state officials "from governor to dogcatcher."⁸ These Jacksonian changes created electoral rules which, in the future, would make it possible for lower class whites to challenge the political dominance of the plantation owners.

The opposition Whig party, which contained remnants of Jackson's opponents, was favored by the same elements in Natchez as had supported the old Federalist party. Plantation wealth in northeast Mississippi began to rival that of Natchez. The state's first bank and first free school were established in Columbus, and by the 1850s the center of wealth had moved to the north central and northeast Hills area. As North Mississippi became more prosperous, planters in that area also joined the Whigs. While the Jacksonian Democrats tended to dominate state elections, the presidential elections from 1836 to 1856 were fairly competitive as they were nationally. In 1840 Mississippi even helped to elect the Whig general William Henry Harrison to the White House, because of dissatisfaction with hard economic times and the Democratic President Martin Van Buren.⁹

In the 1850s, however, the national Democratic party became more closely associated with the South's position on slavery, and the Whig party began to decline in the state. Many Whigs drifted into the short-lived American party whose "Know-Nothing" opposition to foreign immigrants, especially Catholics, appealed to nativist sentiments.¹⁰ The Republican party's growth in northern states as the champion of abolition and free soil drove most Mississippians into the Democratic party and helped to inaugurate the one party, Democratic tradition in Mississippi and other southern states.¹¹ Radical secessionists from Mississippi rejected the northern Democratic candidate, Stephen Douglas of Illinois, and walked out of the 1860 Democratic national convention. Ironically, mobilization of the state's voters in the 1860 election for John Breckenridge, a Southern Democrat from Kentucky, guaranteed Abraham Lincoln's election.¹²

Reconstruction and Redemption

Immediately after the Civil War, conservative whites, who held political power briefly, enacted the Black Code to maintain white supremacy. This code limited the civil liberties of blacks in many ways, such as by prohibiting blacks from leasing or renting land outside of incorporated towns. The Black Code also required that black males sign labor contracts; those who failed to sign were subject to arrest as vagrants. An apprenticeship system required dependent blacks to be apprenticed to suitable whites with first preference given to former owners. In one case, the children of a self-sufficient black couple were apprenticed to former owners who refused to release them; in another instance, a judge decided that a black father had no legal authority over his 9-year-old daughter who had been contracted against his will since she was deemed illegitimate. Many northern whites saw the Black Codes as an effort by southern whites to re-enslave blacks. Subsequent Reconstruction governments repealed these measures.¹³

During Congressionally-imposed Reconstruction from 1870 to 1876, Republicans dominated Mississippi state government with the support of newly freed slaves. In the 1870 state legislature, which contained 107 members, 52 were white Republicans, 30 were black Republicans, and only 25 were white conservatives. After the 1873 elections, blacks held the important offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, education superintendent, and Speaker of the House. The only blacks in the U.S. Senate during the Reconstruction era were both from Mississippi, Blanche Bruce and Hiram Revels.¹⁴

The Republican Reconstruction government in Mississippi aggressively sought to improve government services and protect the rights of blacks. Railroads, bridges, and public facilities were rebuilt, levees were repaired, and hospitals and insane asylums were constructed. A state Civil Rights Act was passed in 1870 outlawing discrimination in public places and on public vehicles. For a brief period, state government transcended Mississippi's traditionalistic political culture that called for limited government activity. The opposition press and some historians of the period charged that fraud and extravagance were widespread in the Reconstruction government, although subsequent "revisionist" historians have argued that these charges were exaggerated.

One of the most controversial Reconstruction measures was a public school law, opposed by many whites, that significantly increased student enrollment. Some whites resented having to pay property taxes to educate black children, whose parents often did not pay such taxes because they generally did not own land. Some whites opposed the "mingling of all classes," including the mingling of poor whites with rich whites. The fears of inter-racial mingling turned out to be unfounded, because segregated schools were maintained. During this period, for example, Alcorn University was established as the black counterpart to the white University of Mississippi. A final concern was that white Republican teachers would indoctrinate black children to support the Republican party. During Reconstruction the public school system became a major target of the Ku Klux Klan, which often intimidated teachers and destroyed school buildings.¹⁵

In 1875 as a reaction to their distaste for the Reconstruction government, conservative whites instituted the Mississippi Plan to ensure that the Democrats would carry that year's state elections. The Mississippi Plan included such tactics as intimidating blacks, stuffing the ballot box with Democratic votes, destroying Republican ballots, substituting Democratic for Republican tickets for illiterate blacks, and miscounting ballots. This plan permitted conservative Democrats to regain control of state government, whereupon they immediately impeached the black Lieutenant Governor Alexander Davis, and forced the resignation of Republican Governor Adelbert Ames.¹⁶

Conservative white Democrats solidified their hold on state government. In 1876 a complex election law was passed that permitted local election officials to require voters to know their section, township, and range, which was then applied primarily to blacks to disenfranchise many of them. Given that blacks lived predominantly in the Delta and Natchez areas, the legislature included them in one shoestring congressional district that stretched from the Tennessee to the Louisiana border, so that at most blacks would control only one of the state's six districts.

After the poor Republican showing in 1876, many whites began to abandon the party, and by 1878 the party's leadership was controlled by blacks. While the party remained a factor in local and sometimes state elections, the Republicans ceased to threaten Democratic supremacy in the state. Despite the disenfranchisement of many blacks, the legislature apportioned its districts on the basis of white and black population, thereby permitting the conservative, aristocratic whites in the heavily black Delta region to dominate state government for the rest of the century.¹⁷

Having accused the Reconstruction government of excessive taxation and wasteful spending, the Redeemers pursued fiscal retrenchment. They cut property taxes, abolished many government jobs, and slashed spending for schools and public services, thereby reducing government spending from about $1,400,000 per year under the Republicans to $600,000 a decade later. Consequently, in the 1880s Governor Robert Lowry found the state woefully short of funds for operating schools, colleges, and other state agencies. Some public leaders began to argue that taxes were too low, while radical agrarian leaders accused the Redeemers of corruption and incompetence.¹⁸

The traditionalistic political culture had become so dominant in Mississippi that its vision of history even pervaded textbooks written by college professors. One prominent textbook cited the positive points about slavery: "... in most cases public opinion and state law assured the slave of good treatment ... prevailing sentiment was inclined toward lenient treatment of slaves... Usually the planter took a keen interest in his slaves, ministering to both their spiritual and their physical needs." This book decried the financial ruin caused by the Civil War by "the wiping out of a tremendous amount of property in slaves," each of which was worth about $2,000.¹⁹ The 1860 federal census had listed Mississippi as the fifth wealthiest state in the nation, but from 1870 on, the state fell to the bottom.

Mississippi textbooks also attacked the Reconstruction legislature: "It did more to increase the state debt than to solve postwar problems... Soon taxes began to skyrocket..." One book summarizes Reconstruction as "Carpetbag and Negro rule," and describes conservative redemption in a section entitled: "The White Man Fights Back." The text continues, "After 1875, the old bitterness began to wane. Mississippi was back under the control of the white people, the Redeemers." With the departure of many carpetbaggers and Republicans, "... it was Mississippi for the Mississippians from now on."²⁰

Segregation and Disenfranchisement

In the closing years of the 19th century, racial segregation and white supremacy arose in Mississippi and other southern states. In 1888 racially segregated accommodations on railroads were required by the Mississippi legislature. By 1890 most cities had a dual cemetery policy, and parks, playgrounds, streetcars, waiting rooms, and elevators were racially segregated. Segregation in schools continued, and separation in churches intensified. As with poor whites, most blacks found themselves bound by the crop lien system to the oppressive yoke of sharecropping. White supremacy was ultimately enforced by lynching, in which local whites at times took the law into their own hands when dealing with blacks who had allegedly committed violent crimes against whites. Five hundred and thirty four blacks were lynched in Mississippi between the years 1882 and 1952, more than in any other state.²¹

By 1890 many political leaders wanted a new constitution to replace the one written by the old Reconstruction government in 1869. Many white Mississippians, including the Populists, desired the "legal" disenfranchisement of blacks for various reasons. Some felt that white Mississippians would never be free to divide on important economic and political issues as long as the presence of black voters would encourage white unity.

U.S. Senator James Z. George, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the most influential member of the 1890 constitutional convention's Committee on Suffrage and Elections, reflected the mood of most white Mississippians. On one occasion, he was quoted as saying: "Our chief duty when we meet in Convention, is to devise such measures, consistent with the Constitution of the United States, as will enable us to maintain a home government, under the control of the white people of the State." Another time George argued that blacks were under the protection of the white race: "its incapacity must be guarded and its civil and political rights neither denied nor abridged, but white predominance must be secured in order that good government may be maintained."²²

Convention delegate J.J. Chrisman urged disenfranchisement as a "good government" move: "It is no secret that there has not been a fair count in Mississippi since 1875, that we have been preserving the ascendancy of the white people by revolutionary methods. In other words, we have been stuffing ballot boxes, committing perjury, and here and there in the state carrying the election by fraud and violence until the whole machinery for elections is about to rot down. No man can be in favor of perpetuating the election methods which have prevailed in Mississippi since 1875 who is not a moral idiot."²³

The constitution of 1890 instituted stricter requirements for voting, such as a two-year state and one-year electoral district residency requirement, registration four months before the election, and a $2 poll tax payable two years before the election year. Voters would now be required to read any section of the state constitution, or to be able to "understand" it when it was read to them or to give a "reasonable interpretation" of it. When some delegates expressed concern that this literacy and interpretation clause would disenfranchise poor whites, others responded that it would be enforced only against blacks.²⁴

The implementation of the 1890 constitution did indeed disenfranchise some poor whites, but blacks were especially affected. Only 8,600 of 147,000 eligible blacks were registered in 1892. Among whites, 120,000 had been qualified to vote in 1890, but only 68,000 were registered in 1892. While the poll tax helped to disenfranchise people of both races for financial reasons, especially during the difficult economic times of the 1890s, the literacy test was administered in an unequal manner to disenfranchise primarily blacks.²⁵ The white elite in Mississippi had succeeded in limiting mass participation in politics. Indeed, as late as 1964 only 7 percent of blacks of voting age were registered to vote.

The Hills Versus the Delta

With the disenfranchisement of most blacks, political divisions in the first half of the 20th century in Mississippi often occurred over economic issues. Such cleavages often separated the more prosperous Mississippi Delta region from the poor Hills and Piney Woods areas.

Rich Delta planters, such as Senator LeRoy Percy, often embodied the qualities felt desirable in aristocrats, such as honor, dignity, and fair-dealing. Consequently, the Delta often selected very able leaders who represented them effectively in the legislature. Politically, the Delta tended to be conservative on economic issues, opposing the New Deal welfare state as an infringement on states' rights and a destroyer of individual initiative. While Delta whites supported segregation and disenfranchisement, their paternalistic orientation led them to back improved health care and education for blacks, and their aristocratic characteristics led them to frown on campaigns based on racist demagoguery.²⁶

In the late 1800s the Hills and the Piney Woods regions, dominated by poor whites, had become hotbeds of agrarian discontent in which the Greenback, Grange, Alliance, and Neopopulist movements grew. Neopopulist attacks on "predatory corporations" coupled with their demands for reduction in interest rates and equalization of tax assessments had proved to be politically popular among poor white "peckerwoods" farmers.²⁷ New Deal-style programs, such as social security and public assistance were applauded because they benefitted lower income whites. On the race issue, however, Hill whites often found racist rhetoric appealing, and resented the allegedly better living conditions of black tenant farmers in the Delta compared to the lives of hill whites. The Hills also tended to support prohibition, while the Delta opposed it.²⁸

Some early neo-populists, such as Governor James Vardaman, employed blatant and graphic racist rhetoric to attract the red clay "Hill" farmers. During the 1903 gubernatorial race, Vardaman, in a speech delivered in Columbus, was quoted as saying that the Declaration of Independence did not apply to "wild animals and niggers." On another occasion, he accused the black of being "a lazy, lying, lustful animal which no amount of training can transform into a tolerable citizen." His nature, said Vardaman, was unlike the white man's, but "resembles the hog's." Regarding the black's alleged lust for white women, he said, "We would be justified in slaughtering every Ethiop on the earth to preserve unsullied the honor of one Caucasian home... We do not stop when we see a wolf to find if it will kill sheep before disposing of it, but assume that it will." Vardaman, who became known as the "Great White Chief," declared in reference to voting rights for blacks that there was "nothing in his individual character, nothing in his achievements of the past nor his promise of the future" that would entitle him "to stand, side by side with the white man at the ballot box.".²⁹

The animosity between these two regions was illustrated by the battle between Delta planter LeRoy Percy and Hill populist James Vardaman for the U.S. Senate in 1910 and 1911. After the legislature selected Percy over Vardaman for the Senate seat in 1910, one of Vardaman's legislative supporters, Theodore "The Man" Bilbo, charged that he had been offered a bribe to vote for Percy. The legislature promptly denounced Bilbo after it was discovered that the bills he offered as evidence had been minted after the day on which he had allegedly accepted them as a bribe. Bilbo refused to resign from the legislature, and proceeded to build a political career based on his allegedly being persecuted by political opponents. In one campaign he received a scar after being wrapped over the head with a pistol butt by a political opponent whom he had described as "a cross between a hyena and a mongrel... begotten in a nigger graveyard at midnight, suckled by a sow, and educated by a fool."³⁰

In a Democratic primary election in 1911, Vardaman was able to unseat Percy, and political power continued to shift away from the aristocratic Delta to the neo-populist Hills. The description of a campaign crowd in the Hills by Senator Percy's son illustrates the stylistic and class divisions that permeated Mississippi politics. "I looked over the ill-dressed, surly audience, unintelligent and slinking... They were the sort of people that lynch Negroes, that mistake hoodlumism for wit, and cunning for intelligence, that attend revivals and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterward. They were undiluted Anglo-Saxons."³¹

Yet despite the racist demagoguery, neo-populists like Vardaman and Bilbo often pursued non-racist, progressive policies once in office. As governor, Vardaman significantly increased funding for education and teachers' salaries, indirectly helping blacks as well as whites. He created a state textbook commission and instituted competitive bidding practices. Vardaman also increased state regulation of insurance companies, railroads, banks, and utilities (which some believe may have unwittingly slowed the pace of economic development in Mississippi). He also ended convict leasing, improved conditions at the state prison, and fought for child-labor laws. Bilbo, as governor, established a state tuberculosis hospital, industrial schools, a state commission for the blind, and supported malaria control and the consolidation of rural schools.³²

Therefore, despite the closed nature of Mississippi's traditionalistic society, in the first four decades of this century the state responded to some extent to the progressive movement that swept across the nation. With the "race issue" settled by Jim Crow laws, the fundamental economic cleavages within the white community resurfaced. The neopopulist movement arose with Vardaman's candidacy and was crystallized into a distinct voting bloc by Bilbo. It attracted large numbers of poor, uneducated "rednecks" who provided the votes to elect five neopopulist governors between 1903 and 1939.³³ The numerous progressive measures in the areas of education, health, labor, business, and agriculture that were adopted between 1908 and 1920 led some observers to conclude that this period was the most constructive in Mississippi history. One author concludes that the Progressive movement was important in helping the state move forward by "battering down some of the bulwarks of conservatism in an agricultural state which had become static."³⁴ Although the success of Mississippi's populists never quite reached the level found in Georgia, candidates representing the interests of the poor, "peckerwoods" populations in the Hills exercised more influence in state government than their counterparts in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, or Texas.

The Struggle Over Modernization

Throughout the 20th century, Mississippi has had to struggle against its traditionalistic culture based on an agricultural economy to introduce a more industrialized base and progressive social change. That struggle continues today.

Some political observers feel that the constitution of 1890 has been a key impediment to economic development in Mississippi. They acknowledge that the constitution initially addressed the "populist" concerns of white eastern "Hill" farmers about business abuses, such as permanent business tax exemptions, city bonds to finance business construction that never took place, management abuse of railroad workers, and discriminatory utility rates. "The difficulty was that much specific, detailed language, which is in tone hostile to business, remained in the constitution after the problems of the 1880s were largely ended. Several recent students of the subject have concluded that the constitution's corporations article is at least outdated and, because of its anti-business timbre, may well have hampered the state's industrial development efforts."³⁵

The system of higher education has occasionally been hurt by the forces of reaction. In 1930 Governor Bilbo, a great supporter of the "spoils system," gained control over the Board of Trustees of Higher Learning by appointing new members. He engineered the firing of 179 faculty and staff members who had opposed him politically, such as in his effort to consolidate the universities in the state into one location (the state capital, Jackson). Accrediting agencies suspended many of the universities until the succeeding Governor, Mike Conner, reformed the Board of Trustees to provide staggered terms for members, which would make it impossible for one governor to gain control of the board. Higher education was also hurt by the Great Depression, which caused such a decrease in state funding that it was not until the 1946-47 fiscal year that state appropriations for higher education reached the level of 1930-31.³⁶

From the initial speculative boom in the 1830s until the 1930s, Mississippi "was like one great cotton plantation."³⁷ The antebellum slave system and its successor, tenant farming, led to extreme income inequality. The state's only other economic resource--its immense pine forests--were decimated by outside lumber companies by the 1920s. Because of this dependence on one crop, Mississippi's economy "was like an underdeveloped Latin American country."³⁸ In 1930 and 1931 cotton prices collapsed and in 1932 mortgages were foreclosed on one in every ten farms. "On a single day in April 1932, one-fourth of the land area of Mississippi was auctioned for unpaid taxes."³⁹ Disaster finally provoked action to diversify agriculture and to industrialize the economy.

To cope with plunging government revenues during the Great Depression, Governor Conner demonstrated great political courage in leading Mississippi to become the first state to institute a sales tax. At one point, sales tax opponents, after a protest meeting of 5,000 people, had even filled the corridor outside of the governor's office. One protester had to be disarmed after pulling a pistol from his belt, pointing it at the governor's door, and yelling, "Stand back. I'm coming in." Since the state at that time was heavily dependent on the property tax, some proponents felt that the sales tax would be the most effective means to make blacks and poor whites pay taxes. The new sales tax broadened the tax base by requiring non-property owners to help pay for the costs of government services.⁴⁰

Hugh White, who became governor in 1936, instituted a major program to attract industry to Mississippi, which was called BAWI (Balance Agriculture with Industry). This program, viewed as "the keystone to 20th century industrial development efforts," helped to attract outside capital, industry, and jobs to Mississippi with promises of locally financed factory construction and tax exemptions.⁴¹ In the face of widespread public support for the BAWI program, Section 183 of the state constitution, which prohibited such government aid to businesses, was essentially ignored. In the first five years, twelve plants were set up under BAWI-approved bonds, including Ingalls shipyard at Pascagoula, though most were garment plants. The wartime boom in manufacturing caused a deemphasis on the BAWI program, but it was revived after the war. By 1958 the program had sponsored a total of 188 industrial projects, including 141 new industries and 47 plant expansions.⁴² BAWI's success in luring manufacturing to the state also meant an influx of "Yankees," and some towns, such as Tupelo, even began to incorporate these "outsiders" into their leadership.

The BAWI effort may have reinforced the traditionalistic culture of the state by perpetuating the anti-union sentiment among political leaders. Many political leaders felt that businesses would be attracted to the state because of the cheap labor made possible by the weakness of labor unions. Labor leaders charged that anti-union sentiment was especially great in north Mississippi (north of Jackson, Vicksburg, and Meridian). Most firms attracted to Mississippi under the BAWI plan were apparel, textile, and furniture firms--low-wage industries that have long resisted unions. Mississippi's anti-union orientation was also reflected in the fact that state courts routinely granted injunctions against picketing and other union activities, and in passage of a 1954 right-to-work law. The political culture of the state has hindered the growth of labor unions. The focus on low wage industries and the underfunding of education has limited Mississippi's ability to attract more high technology industries that provide higher salaries.⁴³

Tractors replaced mules in the 1920s and mechanical cotton pickers replaced uneducated field hands in the late 1940s and 1950s. Although small numbers of blacks had left the state during World War I, approximately 300,000 blacks (and 100,000 whites) moved north to take jobs in the war industries during World War II. Many of the blacks who remained in Mississippi had few skills to survive in the state's emerging industrial sector.⁴⁴

Until the late 1960s the leadership of the city of Jackson preferred not to recruit outside industry because new factories might bring about unionization of the workforce. Other Mississippi communities into the 1970s focused their economic development campaigns on business activities that would not employ large numbers of semiskilled or unskilled laborers. These smaller communities were afraid of two possibilities (1) the in-migration of outsiders and (2) the movement of local blacks away from traditional occupations that kept them dependent on the local white establishment.⁴⁵

A number of programs and agencies have helped to modernize the state. Free textbooks, increased funding for the aged, a state retirement system, a community hospital program, a quadrupling of the miles of paved highways, and the Jackson medical school were achieved by governors in the 1940s and 1950s. Mississippi established an impressive Research and Development Center in Jackson, which began to serve as a major force for change and economic development. The pace of progressive change has continued into the 1980s and even accelerated. Landmark programs like the Education Reform Act that significantly improved the public schools continue to transform the state's socioeconomic character.⁴⁶

The Civil Rights Struggle

The Civil Rights movement, which culminated in laws requiring desegregation and the enfranchisement of blacks, struck a major blow against Mississippi's traditionalistic political culture. With the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965, the political system opened up and black voter turnout soared. The increased power of blacks and other liberal groups encouraged the implementation of more progressive public policies. As blacks became heavily involved in the Democratic Party, many conservative whites fled to the fledgling Republican Party, stimulating two party competition in the state.

President Harry S. Truman's actions to secure basic civil rights for black Americans returned race to the forefront of Mississippi's politics. Governor Fielding Wright put the authority of state government behind the defense of white supremacy in his 1948 Inaugural Address when he declared "vital principles and eternal truths transcend party lines and the day is now at hand when determined action must be taken."⁴⁷ The explosion of racial animosity eclipsed the class-based battles between the Delta planters and the "rednecks" in the Hills and Piney Woods. Elections throughout the 1950s and 1960s became contests by candidates to establish themselves as the staunchest defender of segregation.

In the 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated public schools to be inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. More than any other previous step taken by the federal government, Brown stirred white supremacists into a frenzy. U.S. Senator James Eastland accused the Court of "a monstrous crime... The antisegregation decisions are dishonest decisions... The judges who rendered them violated their oaths of office. They have disgraced the high office which they hold." He accused sociologists cited in the case of being "agitators who are part and parcel of the Communist conspiracy to destroy our country." In a more restrained vein, Governor Hugh White pledged resistance by "every legal means at our command."⁴⁸

As segregation came under attack, Robert Patterson and thirteen other white businessmen in Indianola formed the first white Citizens' Council, which became a white-collar version of the Klan.⁴⁹ The NAACP petition movement requesting school integration in five towns was destroyed after the names of signers were published and many of them lost their jobs, were refused credit, and sometimes forced to leave town. A few white Mississippians resisted the Citizens Councils, such as editor of the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times, Hodding Carter. (His son would serve as State Department spokesman under President Carter.) After writing an article entitled, "A Wave of Terror Threatens the South," Carter was censured by the Mississippi House of Representatives on an 89-19 vote for "selling out the state for Yankee gold." Carter responded by writing: "I herewith resolve by a vote of 1 to 0 that there are 89 liars in the State Legislature... those 89 character mobbers can go to hell collectively or singly and wait there until I back down."⁵⁰

The Citizens' Councils, which spread from Mississippi to several other southern states, were "a counter-movement, a mobilization of individuals and groups who felt threatened by change."⁵¹ Members of the Councils believed that only mass action and total control could stop the subversion of Mississippi's traditional way of life. Local councils distributed segregationist literature, organized "Minute Men" to stage protests, published lists of blacks who engaged in any form of political activity, kept blacklists of professors sympathetic to integration, and orchestrated economic and social pressure aimed at driving black activists out of town and out of the state.⁵² The Citizens' Councils gained access to the finances and police power of state government through their ties with the State Sovereignty Commission, an administrative agency charged with the preservation of segregation and equipped with investigators who could probe into "subversive activities."⁵³ Working together the Sovereignty Commission and the Citizens' Councils "created a climate of fear that has straight-jacketed the white community in a thought control enforced by financial sanctions, and has undone most of the improvements in race relations made over the last 30 years."⁵⁴

In 1961 the hysteria turned into violent rage, as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began its voter registration drive in McComb. Beatings, bombings, and the murder of Herbert Lee in Amite County formed the white response to black demands for equal suffrage. Robert Moses, Dave Dennis, E. W. Steptoe, and Robert Zellner became legends among civil rights advocates for their determined stand in McComb. Similar events also took place in the Delta where Fannie Lou Hamer, Lawrence Guyot, Aaron Henry, and Amzie Moore led voter education projects. Civil rights workers suffered physical attacks by "nightriders" and by state and local authorities. In some communities, white leadership stopped the distribution of federal government surplus food in an effort to pressure local blacks into resisting the appeals of "outside agitators."⁵⁵

The hysteria reached a peak when a former serviceman who was black, James Meredith, attempted in 1962 to integrate the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). Despite a court order requiring Meredith's admission, Governor Ross Barnett publicly pledged never "to surrender to the evil and illegal forces of tyranny." In mid-September Governor Barnett invoked the pre-Civil War doctrine of interposition as a means of blocking Meredith's entry into Ole Miss, and during the last two weeks of September, Mississippi officials successfully thwarted federal efforts to enroll him on four occasions.

Prior to one of the confrontations, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Governor Barnett made an effort to effect a symbolic surrender in which federal marshals would level their guns at the governor, and he would step aside. Such a "heroic" capitulation, it was hoped, would conciliate white public opinion in the state which overwhelmingly supported resistance. An argument soon developed between Barnett and Kennedy as to whether the chief marshal or all of the marshals should draw their weapons. Eventually, the plan was cancelled out of fear that it might trigger a shoot-out at the university between federal and state authorities.⁵⁷

By late September, with large numbers of federal forces moving into the state to secure Meredith's entry and with the threat of major bloodshed increasing by the hour, Governor Barnett capitulated and permitted Meredith to be brought onto campus by federal marshals for enrollment. Other elements affecting Barnett's decision could have been his upcoming contempt trial in federal court for defying a court order requiring Meredith's admission, and a threat by Robert Kennedy to make public their earlier negotiations.⁵⁸

With Meredith's arrival at Ole Miss, a full-scale riot occurred, as white students and non-students threw rocks, bottles, and broken pipes at the marshals, fired guns, and overturned and burned cars and trucks. One hundred sixty federal marshals were injured, 28 of whom were shot. Two bystanders, including a French journalist, were killed. President John F. Kennedy dispatched more than six thousand U.S. Army troops to help restore order. Peace and integration had finally come to Ole Miss.⁵⁹

As black citizens continued to demand equal rights, white rage continued unabated. In 1963 the best-known black leader in Mississippi, state NAACP field secretary, Medgar Evers, was ambushed and killed in his driveway in Jackson. Three civil rights workers, two of whom were white, disappeared in Neshoba county. Eventually, their bodies were found buried under eighteen feet of clay. (A controversial movie released in 1988, Mississippi Burning, was based on this incident.) In the summer of 1964, "whites burned 37 black churches, bombed 30 homes, beat more than 80 civil rights workers, and made more than 1,000 arrests."⁶⁰ The Mississippi Ku Klux Klan promoted violence against blacks, and fanned the flames of religious fanaticism and superpatriotism. Klan members argued that they were fighting against communism, and that the Red conspiracy included civil rights leaders, Jews, and the federal government.⁶¹ National television broadcast pictures of the violence directed against blacks living in the South, and an aroused American public pushed Congress to enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing racial discrimination in public accommodations, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Mississippi blacks were not deterred by the violence from their quest for equal rights. A coalition of civil rights organizations in 1964 formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and challenged the credentials of the all-white Mississippi "regular" Democratic delegation to the national party convention. A compromise devised by the national party was rejected by both sides. At that convention, Fannie Lou Hamer, raised the conscience of the nation by relating how she had been beaten by officials for trying to integrate a Winona bus station. By 1968 Freedom Democrats, more moderate blacks, liberal whites, and organized labor formed a "loyalist" coalition, loyal to the "national" Democratic party. The "loyalists" were successful in convincing the national Democratic conventions in 1968 and 1972 to seat them in place of the "regulars," because of widespread irregularities in the delegate selection process employed by the regulars.⁶²

Gradually, white attitudes began to change and to accept the inevitability of integration. In 1963 the traditionally white, land-grant institution, Mississippi State University, represented the Southeastern Conference in the NCAA basketball tournament despite the presence of integrated opposing teams.⁶³ Twenty-eight Methodist ministers spoke out against racial injustice, as did the First Baptist Church in Biloxi. Claude Ramsay, head of the state AFL-CIO, fought against racial discrimination, and more and more newspapers argued for racial understanding.⁶⁴

By 1965 the business community had become fearful that Mississippi's tarnished image would hinder economic development. An Ohio industrialist had refused to expand two Mississippi plants until the state "decides to become a part of the Union again." The Mississippi Economic Council urged compliance with federal law and support for public schools. Other business groups, including the Mississippi Manufacturer's Association, endorsed this statement.⁶⁵ Paradoxically, the business community, which originally supported the Citizens' Councils and the Klan in their brutal defense of segregation, became the pivotal force in ending the violence. Economic realism, not moral outrage, convinced Mississippi's economic elites that the costs of segregation were too high. Once this realism was accepted, the violence against blacks stopped within less than a year.

Mississippi Joins the New South

Due to the efforts of the federal government and the people of Mississippi, the state today possesses a substantially integrated society. The percentage of blacks attending integrated public schools is higher than in some northern states, like New York and Illinois.⁶⁶ The percentage of eligible blacks registered to vote rose dramatically from 7 percent in 1965 to 68 percent in 1970, and has remained significant. In 1976 Governor Cliff Finch was successful in unifying the loyalist and regular factions of the Democratic party and sending one delegation to the national convention. At the 1984 state Democratic convention, nearly half of the delegates were black. By 1987, 20 blacks sat in the state legislature, chairing important committees, such as the House Education Committee, and a black represented Mississippi in the U.S. Congress (Mike Espy, representing the 2nd Delta district). Change was even evident in the social arena, as blacks were selected for the titles of Miss Mississippi and Mrs. Mississippi.

An important source of progressive change in the state's political and social culture has been its youth. Symbolic of this generational change, in 1989 two black students, Steven Cooper and Kelvin Covington, were elected president and vice president of the student body at Mississippi State University, the largest university in the state with a black enrollment of about 12 percent. They became the first blacks ever elected as student body leaders at one of Mississippi's traditionally white universities. In 1990 Kelvin Covington succeeded Cooper as the elected president of the student body.

Freed from racial violence, Mississippi joined the "New South". Through the 1970s, Mississippi rode the rising tide of the Sunbelt "economic miracle." At mid decade, average per capita income reached 86 percent of the southern average and 69 percent of the national average. By 1978 manufacturing jobs reached an all time high of 235,300 and the service sector was expanding rapidly.⁶⁷ Rural counties relying on agriculture experienced population out-migrations as Mississippians moved to the boom areas of Jackson, the Gulf Coast, the Tupelo-Columbus corridor, and the Memphis suburbs. Even the galloping inflation of the late 1970s did not dampen the boom.

After a decade of rapid economic improvements, the Sunbelt bubble burst with serious consequences for Mississippi. The 1981-82 recession hit hard, and manufacturing jobs declined by over 15 percent.⁶⁸ The state's famed cheap labor could no longer save the economy as corporations moved factories overseas to take advantage of even "cheaper" labor. At the same time, federal cuts in real spending on welfare programs had a devastating impact on the state's poor, especially the "working poor." Millions of federal dollars and the accompanying multiplier effect they generated disappeared.⁶⁹ With unemployment on the rise, state government revenues plummeted, throwing state government into a protracted budget crisis. While the nation underwent sustained economic growth after the recession, Mississippi remained mired in economic stagnation until the late 1980s. The combination of declining agricultural prices, falling energy prices, and the movement of many low skilled manufacturing jobs overseas slowed the state's economic recovery, and demonstrated the need for a more diversified economy. State politics in the 1980s revolved around various proposals and strategies to end the fiscal crisis and to restart the state's economic engine. Without the likelihood of significant aid from Washington, state leaders were forced to look seriously at home-grown resources. Although a generational change occurred in political leadership in the post-segregation period, the battle lines over public policy remain strikingly familiar: traditionalists versus modernizers.