The Dixiecrat Revolt: Postwar Mississippi & Civil Rights Struggle

1. Chapter 9 Mississippi in the Postwar Period

2. The Dixiecraft Revolt • Following World War 2, Mississippians faced a troubled future • Black veterans came home wanting to end segregation • White veterans came home with doubts about continuing segregation • Most Mississippians were determined to preserve it

3. The Dixiecrat Revolt • In 1946 when Theodore Bilbo ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate • He responded to black demands for equality by advising white Mississippians to visit blacks the night before the election to “persuade” them not to vote • Although he won the election he was denied his seat for openly inciting violence • During the investigation, Bilbo died of cancer

4. The Dixiecrat Revolt • In 1947, new members of the House of Representatives • Most were veterans who wanted to reorganize the government, improve education, and help working people • The first worker’s compensation law was passed • A form of government insurance for accidental death or injuries in the workplace • Further efforts of reform was stopped or halted by segregation issues

5. The Dixiecrat Revolt • In 1946, Governor Thomas Bailey died in office and was succeeded by Fielding Wright, who was a segregationist who opposed black efforts to vote • In 1948 the Democratic Party took on a civil rights article • Are the basic rights of citizens such as speech and right to vote, privacy, and property ownership • When the convention ignored Mississippi’s protest, Mississippi’s delegates walked out

6. The Dixiecrat Revolt • These delegates met later in Alabama and formed the States’ Rights party…..in 1948 • They were also known as the Dixiecrats, and they adopted the confederate battle flag as their symbol and “Dixie as their song.

7. The Rebirth of the Republican Party • During the 1952 presidential race, an important change occurred in the Republican party • Their leader was an African American lawyer named Perry Howard • Republicans couldn’t win an election in Mississippi since Reconstruction • White Mississippians took over the party in favor of segregation

8. Mississippi’s Congressional Influence • Mississippi worked hard to delay the adoption of civil rights laws and to protect segregation • Most civil rights bills were kept from even getting to the floor of the senate

9. Social Change • Thanks to the GI BILL of 1944, thousands of young men returning from the war could attend the states colleges and junior colleges. • Higher living standards strengthened the middle class • Vacuum cleaners and frozen foods replaced black maids. • The split that had separated the sharecropper and the planter disappeared into a middle-class balance brought about by the great prosperity of postwar America.

10. Segregation and Integration • In 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in the Plessy VS Ferguson case, that legally established the Separate-but-equal concept, this allowed states to pass laws to segregate public facilities for blacks and whites. • Governor White called on 100 of the states black leaders, to support the separate but equal plan, they rejected this “voluntary “ segregation plan.

11. Segregation and Integration • White had convinced himself that black people really did accept segregation. • Negotiations ended with White supporting segregation and the black leaders demanding INTEGRATION, the process of bringing different groups (races) into society as equals.

12. Segregation and Integration • In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs the Board of Education said that the separate but equal concept was unconstitutional. No more segregation in public faclities. It required the integration of public schools. • in a decision known as BROWN 2, the court ordered that schools be integrated with “all deliberate speed”. • Almost immediately after the decision, a white resistance movement developed. Like the….

13. Segregation and Integration • White Citizens Council- the council distributed materials supporting segregation, organized political pressure, started a newspaper and made t.v. and radio broadcast. • Joining the organization soon became essential for every white citizen of any note in Mississippi communities with large black populations

14. EMMETT TILL, 14 • A young black man from Chicago, who allegedly “wolf whistled” made a pass at a white woman in a rural store. • Two men kidnapped him, beat him, killed him and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River. • The coverage of the trial and the acquittal of his accused murders, (who later admitted their guilt in a national magazine) painted a poor picture of Mississippi and its white citizens. • Pg 212

15. The Interposition Plan • In response to demands for integration and to the media attention, Senator Eastland argued that INTERPOSITION ( PLACING THE STATES RIGHT’S ABOVE THOSE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT )allowed the state to refuse to obey unpopular Supreme Court decisions.

16. Crisis at Ole Miss • In 1962 Gov. Ross Barnett becam a national figure when he refused to obey court orders to enroll JAMES MEREDITH AS THE FIRST BLACK STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI. • FEDERAL TROOPS WERE CALLED IN , TO OXFORD TO MAKE SURE MEREDITH WAS ALLOWED IN. • LAW AND ORDER WERE BREAKING DOWN • NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). SHOWED UP IN OXFORD ALSO.

17. James Meredith

18. VIOLENCE • The most famous victim of the violence was Medgar Evers, head of the Mississippi NAACP. • In June 1963, a sniper murdered Evers on his carport of his home. • Byron de La Beckwith, a white male, and advocate for white surpremacy.. district attorney made a determined effort to convict him for killing Evers, 2 trials later and the all white jury failed to reach a verdict. With a hung jury. Most expected him to be found innocent. • He was retried in 1994 and convicted of the murder

19. Medgar Evers

21. Byron de La Beckwith

22. The Civil Rights Movement • Throughout the 1960’s a number of organizations and individuals worked to end segregation and to register black Mississippians to vote • College faculty member and students started to pro test and preform SIT-INS --(demonstrations where people enter a public facility and refuse to leave.) • Lunch counter sit-ns are examples of nonviolent attempts to oppose segregation.

23. CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT • THE FREEDOM SUMMER--- OF 1964—OVER 1,000 COLLEGE STUDENTS, MOST OF THEM WHITE, TRAVELED TO MISSISSIPPI TO CONDUCT SCHOOLS FOR BLACK CHILDREN AND TO HELP BLACK CITIZENS REGISTER TO VOTE. • THEIR PRESENCE PROVOKED HOSTILITY AMONG WHITE MISSISSIPPIANS, BY AUGUST 4 PEOPLE WERE DEAD, 8 HAD BEEN BEATEN, OVER 1,000 HAD BEEN ARRESTED AND 67 CHURCHES, HOMES, AND BUSINESSES HAD BEEN BURNED OR BOMBED. • Page 216

24. Freedom Summer • In Neshoba county, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, an two white freedom summer workers and James Chaney a young black man from Meridian, went to investigate reports of a church being burned. • They were arrested and released, and then abducted and murdered. • After paying a local informant, the FBI located their bodies in an earthen dam. The murderers were not convicted in Mississippi court, but were found guilty in federal court of violating the rights of the murdered men

26. Civil Rights Movement Dr. Martin Luther King James Earl Ray

27. Dr. Martin Luther King • Martin Luther King, Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. • On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had traveled to support a sanitation workers’ strike.

32. Memphis TN

36. Lorraine Motel, Memphis TN

38. James Earl Ray • James Earl Ray, an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in 1998.

40. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT • ROSA PARKS- THE FIRST LADY OF CIVIL RIGHTS”Civil rights activist Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 to October 24, 2005) refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus, which spurred on the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott that helped launch nationwide efforts to end segregation of public facilities. • FANNIE LOU HAMER…she help found the (FDP) THE FREEDOM DEMOCRATIC PARTY, civil rights worker, traveled across the country convincing millions of Americans that segregation had to end. In Winona, she was arrested, beaten, and jailed.

41. Rosa Parks

42. Fannie Lou Hamer 1964

43. Civil Rights Movement Rosa Parks Fannie Lou Hamer

46. CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT • It did end legally when congress passed the Civil Rights act of 1964…..made it unlawful for any one to discriminate on basis of race if they served the public • The major goal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to…..END SEGREGATION BASED ON RACE.

49. Mississippi’s most important industries • MISSISSIPPI’S MOST IMPORTANT INDUSTTIES ARE WOOD PROCESSING, FURNITURE MAKING, TEXTILES, SHIP BUILDING, PETROLEUM PRODUCTION, AND CATFISH FARMING. • MISSISSIPPI has a Right -to-work law, that allows workers to get and keep jobs without having to join a union , this law also makes it more difficult to organize a union.

50. An improving economy • The biggest change in the state has not been industry, but in the role of government. In 1964 the federal government initiated its “war on poverty.” As the federal government began to supply funds to both states and individuals, Mississippi benefited. • Today, the single largest source of income in Mssissippi today is TRANSFER PAYMENTS—WHICH ARE INCOME PAYMENTS FOR WHICH NO GOODS OR SERVICES ARE EXCHANGED…INCLUDE EVERYTHING FROM WELLFARE TO MILITARY PENSIONS