The Dixiecrat Revolt

After WWII

• Black veterans came home determined to end segregation

• White veterans came home with doubts about continuing segregation but most wanted to preserve it

• 1946: Bilbo ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate, he told white Mississippians to visit blacks the night before the election to “persuade” them not to vote– He won the election but the Senate

denied him his seat for openly inciting violence

• 1947: voters elected 78 new members to the state house of representatives– Many of the new members were veterans who

wanted to reorganize the government, improve education, and help working people

– Passed worker’s compensation law

• 1946: Fielding Wright becomes governor, he focused the legislature’s attention to preserving segregation

Withdrawing from the National Party• Wright vowed to attend the 1948 Democratic National

Convention – Would withdraw from it if the party had a platform that

contained a civil rights article• Civil Rights: basic rights of citizens, such as free speech,

the right to vote, privacy, and property ownership• The convention ignored Mississippi’s request to

preserve segregation and adopted a civil rights article• Southern Democrats left the party and created the

States’ Rights party, known as the Dixiecrats• Wanted to preserve segregation

The Dixiecrats Walk out of the Democratic National Nominating

Convention

Rebirth of the Republican Party

• Many people left the Democratic Party to support the Republican party– In the 1952 presidential election, the national Democratic Party was in favor of

integration.– Integration was combining the separate facilities of the south.– A group calling themselves Democrats for Eisenhower chose to support the

Republican Party in the election.– This, along with the Dixiecrats, showed that the Solid South was breaking up.

• Whites started to take control of the Republican Party because the Democratic party started to supporting integration

Socially

• White Mississippians became the majority of the population

• The split between the sharecropper and the planter disappeared and the middle class grew

• Hugh White, in 1951, was elected governor and his focus was school integration

• Integration: the process of bringing different groups (races) into society as equals

Separate but Equal • 1896- the US Supreme Court issued

a ruling in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case that established separate but equal– Allowed states to pass laws to

segregate public facilities for blacks and whites

Brown vs. Board of Education• 1954-Supreme Court ruled in Brown

vs. Board Education that the separate but equal was unconstitutional

• The Supreme Court decided that segregated facilities were automatically unequal and therefore unconstitutional.

• The Supreme Court ordered that all segregated public schools be integrated.

• 1955- Brown II: schools must be integrated with “all deliberate speed”

• 1954-Delta planter had founded the White Citizen’s Council– Distributed materials supporting segregation– organized political pressure to support

segregation– made radio and television broadcasts in support

of segregation

• 1955- J.P. Coleman was governor of MS and promised to keep schools segregated

The Death of Emmett Till

A. A. August 1955 – 14 year old Chicago boy visited relatives near Money, MS

b.b. Supposedly whistled and called the wife of a Supposedly whistled and called the wife of a local (white) store owner local (white) store owner ““Baby.Baby.””

c.c. Till was taken a few nights later by the store Till was taken a few nights later by the store owner and his brother-in-law.owner and his brother-in-law.

d. Body of Till was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River –corpse unrecognizable

e. Mother of Till insisted on an open casket funeral – so the entire world could see what happened

f. Trial failed to convict the men accused of the crime – even with eye witnesses

g. Huge impact on ALL African-Americans – North/South

Southern Christian Southern Christian Leadership Conference Leadership Conference

(SCLC)(SCLC) a. Organized in 1957 by Martin a. Organized in 1957 by Martin

Luther King, Jr.Luther King, Jr.b. Churches were the largest and b. Churches were the largest and

best-organized black institutions best-organized black institutions allowed to be successful in the allowed to be successful in the segregated society.segregated society.

c. This movement thus c. This movement thus aimed to mobilize the vast power of the black churches on behalf of civil rights.

Sovereignty Commission• Governor Coleman did everything he

could to prevent integration… legally. He didn’t believe he could ignore an order of the U.S. Supreme Court

• He went along with the legislature and established the Sovereignty Commission– Designed to identify, watch, and defeat the

enemies of segregation

• 1959-Coleman loss to Ross Barnett who was backed by the Citizen’s Council– Barnett made the CC apart of the state

government

Crisis at Ole Miss• Federal Court ordered integration of Ole Miss by

admitting James Meredith in 1962.• Gov. Ross Barnett blocked the entrance of the school

and Kennedy sent Federal Marshals to enforce the integration.

• Mob occurred and shot out windows, streetlights and car tires. • 2 killed and 375 injured.

Ross Barnett1. Ross Barnett was the governor of MS

at the time Meredith attempted to enroll - he pledge not to allow Meredith to enroll.

2. The weekend before Meredith was to enroll, Barnett gave a speech at the halftime of the Ole Miss football game, telling the students to “encourage” Meredith not to enroll.

3. His speech led to a riot on the campus of Ole Miss.

4. JFK had to call in the U.S. Army to stop the violence and insure that Meredith was enrolled.

Medgar Evers• Was the head of the Mississippi

NAACP (National Association of the Advancement of Colored People)

• June 1963- Byron de la Beckwith murdered Evers on the carport of his home

• Beckwith went to trial in 1964– Twice the trial ended in a hung jury

(could not reach a verdict)– In 1994, Beckwith was retried a third

time and convicted of murder of Medgar Evers

Mississippi Freedom Summer• Throughout the 1960s, individuals worked to end

segregation and to register black Mississippians to vote

• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) concentrated on voter registration- Traveled to the south to help register black voters

• Organized Sit-ins that were used to desegregate facilities– Where people enter a segregated facility and refuse to

leave

The Freedom Riders

They will be met with violence: many were arrested, the places they stay will be fire-bombed and some will be killed.

Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964

• Summer of 1964• 800 College students from all

over the US met in Ohio to be trained for voter registration in the South by SNCC.

• while working to register African Americans to vote, 3 Civil Rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County

Neshoba County1. In Neshoba County, three civil rights workers will be kidnapped

and murdered - their bodies will eventually be discovered in a pond dam by the FBI.

2. The FBI will arrest 19 men, which included several police officers, but will not try them for murder in the state courts of MS.

3. Instead, they will try 18 of them in federal court for violating the civil rights of the three men.

4. Seven of the men will be found guilty – the longest prison term will be 10 years (none served more than six).

5. Edgar Ray Killen, considered the mastermind of the plan, would be convicted of manslaughter in 2005.

The Site of the Bodies

*On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers — a 21-year-old black Mississippian James Chaney and two white New Yorkers Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24 —were murdered

*June 21, 2005: Edgar Ray Killen, the supposed mastermind of the crime, was sentenced to 60 years in jail for the crimes.

White Mississippians Opposed to the Violence

• Most white Mississippians didn’t support the violence that was occurring in MS during this time but anyone that spoke out against segregation was in danger of being ostracized – shut out of white society – or subjected to violence themselves.

• Churches dismissed pastors who preached moderation.• James Silver, a history professor at Ole Miss, was run out of

the state for publishing The Closed Society – a book about the integration crisis at Ole Miss – and for eating lunch with James Meredith in the university cafeteria.

Fannie Lou Hamer• Fannie Lou Hamer was the 20th

child of a sharecropper who grew up on a plantation in the Delta.

• She became a civil rights worker in MS and was arrested and beaten in Winona, MS.

• She began traveling around the country telling her story, which had a big influence on public opinion.

The Freedom Democratic Party

• In 1964, the Freedom Democratic Party, an integrated group of Mississippians, challenged the regular Democratic Party for their seats at the Democratic national nominating convention.

• Fannie Lou Hamer was allowed to address the convention and she claimed the FDR was the true Democratic Party of MS because it represented all Mississippians.

• The FDR didn’t get the seats at the convention but Hamer’s speech (on television) had a huge impact on public opinion.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Made it unlawful for anyone to discriminate on the basis of race if they served the public– Forced MS businessmen to accept black

customers

• Mississippi business groups urged the public to obey the law

• If they wanted to make money they could not discriminate

Voting Rights Act

• 1965• Sent federal registrars into Mississippi and other

states to register black voters• Abolished the literacy tests!

School Integration• Mississippi schools integrated peacefully in the 1970s• Segregated private schools developed for those

whites unwilling to accept integration• Most whites remained in public schools

Black Political Power• Because of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, 21 black men

were elected to public office in 1964. • Robert Clark, the grandson of a slave, became the first black

man elected to the state legislature since Reconstruction.• In 1971 Charles Evers, Medgar Evers brother, ran for

governor as an independent.• In 1986, Mike Espy was elected to the U.S. House of

Representatives, the first black man elected to the federal government from MS since Reconstruction.

• Espy was eventually chosen by President Bill Clinton to be the Secretary of Agriculture.