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Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when, in 1961, the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against its voting registrar Theron Lynd. While thirty percent of the county’s residents were black, only twelve black persons were on its voting rolls. United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South, and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This book is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case, written by one of the Justice Department’s trial attorneys. The author, then a newly minted lawyer, traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. He met with and prepared the government’s sixteen black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial. Decades later, the author returned to Mississippi and interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends. He intertwines these current reflections with commentary about the case itself. The result is an impassioned fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.

This book reflects on Caribbean politics, particularly radical politics and ideologies in the postcolonial era. The book also explains the peculiarities of the contemporary neoliberal period while searching for pathways beyond the current plight. The first part, “Theoretical Forays” makes a conscious attempt to engage with contemporary Caribbean political thought at a moment of flux and search for a relevant theoretical language and style to both explicate the Caribbean's recent past and confront the difficult conditions of the early twenty-first century. The next part, “Caribbean Questions,” both retrospective and biographical, retraces the authors own engagement with the University of the West Indies, the short-lived but influential Caribbean Black Power movement, the work of seminal Trinidadian thinker and activist Lloyd Best, Cuba's relationship with Jamaica, and the crisis and collapse of the Grenada Revolution. The concluding section “Jamaican Journeys,” excerpts and extracts from a longer, more sustained engagement with Jamaican politics and society. Much of the author's argument builds around the notion that Jamaica faces a crucial moment, as the author seeks to chart and explain its convoluted political path and dismal economic performance over the past three decades. The book suggests that despite the emptying of sovereignty in the increasingly globalized world, windows to enhanced human development might open through greater democracy and popular inclusion.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the city of Memphis was governed by the Shelby County Democratic Party controlled by Edward Hull Crump, described by Time as “the most absolute political boss in the U.S.” This book chronicles the demise of the Crump political machine and the corresponding rise to power of the South’s two minorities, African Americans and Republicans. Between the years 1948 and 1968, Memphis emerged as a battleground in the struggle to create a strong two-party South. For the first time in its history, both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates campaigned vigorously for the Bluff City’s votes. Closely tied to these changing political fortunes was the struggle of African Americans to overturn two centuries of discrimination. At the same time, many believed that the city needed a more modern political structure to meet the challenges of the 1950s and 1960s, preferably a mayor-city council governmental structure. By 1968 the segregated social order had collapsed, black politicians were firmly entrenched within the Democratic party, southern whites had swelled the ranks of the GOP, and Memphis had adopted a new city charter.

This book examines how Martin Luther King's life and work had a profound, if unpredictable, impact on the course of the United States since the civil rights era. A global icon of freedom, justice, and equality, King is recognized worldwide as a beacon in the struggles of peoples seeking to eradicate oppression, entrenched poverty, social deprivation, as well as political and economic disfranchisement. While Dr. King's work and ideas have gained broad traction, some powerful people misappropriate the symbol of King, skewing his legacy. With unique, multidisciplinary works by scholars from around the country, this anthology focuses on contemporary social policies and issues in America. Collectively, these pieces explore wide-ranging issues and contemporary social developments through the lens of Dr. King's perceptions, analysis, and prescriptions. Essayists bring a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to social policies and current issues in light of his ideals. They strive to glean new approaches and solutions that comport with Dr. King's vision. Organized into three sections, the book focuses on selected issues in contemporary domestic politics and policy, foreign policy and foreign affairs, and social developments that impinge upon African Americans and Americans in general. Essays shed light on Dr. King's perspective related to crime and justice, the right to vote, the hip hop movement, American foreign policy in the Middle East and Africa, healthcare, and other pressing issues. This book infers what Dr. King's response and actions might be on important and problematic contemporary policy and social issues that have arisen in the post-civil rights era.

Following the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877, African Americans organized a movement—distinct from the white Populist movement—in the South and parts of the Midwest for economic and political reform: Black Populism. Between 1886 and 1898, tens of thousands of black farmers, sharecroppers, and agrarian workers created their own organizations and tactics primarily under black leadership. As Black Populism grew as a regional force, it met fierce resistance from the Southern Democrats and constituent white planters and local merchants. African Americans carried out a wide range of activities in this hostile environment. They established farming exchanges and cooperatives; raised money for schools; published newspapers; lobbied for better agrarian legislation; mounted boycotts against agricultural trusts and business monopolies; carried out strikes for better wages; protested the convict lease system, segregated coach boxes, and lynching; demanded black jurors in cases involving black defendants; promoted local political reforms and federal supervision of elections; and ran independent and fusion campaigns. Growing out of the networks established by black churches and fraternal organizations, Black Populism found further expression in the Colored Agricultural Wheels, the southern branch of the Knights of Labor, the Cooperative Workers of America, the Farmers Union, and the Colored Farmers Alliance. In the early 1890s, African Americans, together with their white counterparts, launched the People’s Party and ran fusion campaigns with the Republican Party. By the turn of the century, Black Populism had been crushed by relentless attack, hostile propaganda, and targeted assassinations.

This book examines the Know Nothing party in Louisiana. In the early 1850s, the Whig party disintegrated. Several third party movements appeared in the country. Know Nothings seemed to have a strong chance of replacing the Whig party and by 1854 the Know Nothings appeared throughout the United States. This book examines Louisiana because one feature of the Know Nothings, or American party as it was sometimes called, was its anti-foreign and anti-Catholic prejudice. Louisiana, particularly, South Louisiana had a large Roman Catholic population. The book seeks to address whether this feature hurt the party. The book also examines how northern Know Nothings, many of whom were anti-slavery, affected the party’s success in the South. Additionally, early studies of the Know Nothing party in Louisiana argue the party was made up of old Whigs and that traditionally, the party was seen as consisting of older, large slaveholding planters or town businessmen and lawyers connected to the slave-holding interests. This book concludes that Know Nothingism was unique in Louisiana; who actually were Know Nothings does not meet the traditional historical view for the state and the book concludes that the anti-Roman Catholic feature did not preclude South Louisiana slave-holding Catholics from belonging to the party. Louisiana Know Nothings did have difficulty because of the anti-Catholic feature, but it did not prevent Catholics from belonging. Northern Know Nothings’ abolitionism did cause problems for Louisiana Know Nothings, but the election outcomes in the 1850s demonstrated that Union and conservatism was strong in the state.

Sixty years ago, one historian described state legal history as a “wasteland,” a neglected but vitally important part of American history. Legal histories of individual states are now beginning to appear. With this book, Mississippi joins their ranks. The book describes the evolution of Mississippi’s legal system and analyses the changes in that system during the state’s first 200 years. The book examines the interaction of law and society during six key periods of change: (1) Mississippi’s colonial and territorial eras and early years of statehood, when the foundations for its legal system were laid; (2) the evolution of Mississippi slavery and slave law during the early nineteenth century; (3) the state’s role as a leader of legal reform during the age of Andrew Jackson; (4) the unfolding of the Mississippi’s legal response to emancipation and wartime economic devastation during the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow eras; (5) Mississippi’s legal evolution during the Progressive Era and its response to the crisis of the Great Depression; and (6) the state’s legal response to the civil rights and cultural revolutions that have unfolded since 1950.

The Mississippi Freedom Vote of 1963 is no small thing. It is a complex historical and rhetorical phenomenon worthy of in-depth analysis. The Mississippi Freedom Vote of 1963 was an integrated citizens’ campaign to empower and promote agency for blacks within the state. With candidates Aaron Henry, a black pharmacist from Clarksdale, for governor and Reverend Edwin King, a white college chaplain from Vicksburg, for lieutenant governor, the Freedom Vote ran a platform aimed at obtaining votes, justice, jobs, and education for blacks in the Magnolia state. Though the actual campaign took place October 13 through November 4, the Freedom Vote’s impact far transcends those few weeks in the fall of 1963 and extends beyond the borders of Mississippi. Campaign manager Bob Moses was right to label the Freedom Vote “one of the most unique voting campaigns in American history.” It is precisely how the rhetorical forms employed by the Freedom Vote catalyze agency that is so appealing and unique. Educating people about citizenship and then providing an opportunity to practice this phronesis in real time created a groundswell of political activity in Mississippi. The Freedom Vote campaign employed the rhetorical tactics of image events to protest voting rights inequalities by executing a campaign that allowed participants to enact the very agency that was being criticized. The campaign turned protestors in to citizens, allowing local citizens to experience empowerment, and it allowed organizers to learn valuable lessons that they would employ time and time again.

The Populist Movement was the largest mass movement for political and economic change in the history of the American South until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Populist Movement in this book is defined as the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party, as well as the Agricultural Wheel and Knights of Labor in the 1880s and 1890s. The Populists threatened the political hegemony of the white racist southern Democratic Party during populism’s high point in the mid-1890s; and the populists threw the New South into a state of turmoil. The book brings together nine of the best new works on the populist movement in the South that grapple with several larger themes—such as the nature of political insurgency, the relationship between African Americans and whites, electoral reform, new economic policies and producerism, and the relationship between rural and urban areas—in case studies that center on several states and at the local level. Each chapter offers both new research and new interpretations into the causes, course, and consequences of the populist insurgency. One chapter analyzes how notions of debt informed the Populist insurgency in North Carolina, the one state where the Populists achieved statewide power, while another analyzes the Populists’ failed attempts in Grant Parish, Louisiana, to align with African Americans and Republicans to topple the incumbent Democrats.

During the 1890s, North Carolina witnessed a political revolution as the newly formed Populist Party joined with the Republicans to throw out do-nothing, conservative Democrats. Focusing on political transformation, electoral reform, and new economic policies to aid poor and struggling farmers, the Populists and their coalition partners took power at all levels in the only southern state where Populists gained statewide office. For a brief four years, the Populists and Republicans gave an object lesson in progressive politics in which whites and African Americans worked together for the betterment of the state and the lives of the people. This book examines the complex history of the rise and fall of the Populist Party in the late nineteenth century. It explores the causes behind the political insurgency of small farmers in the state. The book offers the first comprehensive and in-depth study of the movement, focusing on local activists as well as state leadership. It also elucidates the relationship between Populists and African Americans, the nature of cooperation between Republicans and Populists, and local dynamics and political campaigning in the Gilded Age. In a last-gasp attempt to return to power, the Democrats focused on the Populists’ weak point: race. The book closes with an analysis of the virulent campaign of white supremacy engineered by threatened Democrats, and the ultimate downfall of already quarreling Populists and Republicans. With the defeat of the Populist ticket, North Carolina joined other southern states by entering an era of segregation.

For more than fifty years, Jack Reed, Sr. (b. 1924) has been a voice of reason in Mississippi—speaking from his platform as a prominent businessman and taking leadership roles in education, race relations, economic and community development, and even church governance. Hardly one to follow the status quo, he always delivered his speeches with a large dose of good cheer. Reed’s audiences, though, did not always reciprocate, especially in his early years, when he spoke out on behalf of public education and racial equality. Reed’s willingness to participate in civic affairs and his oratorical skills led him to leadership roles at state, regional, and national levels—including the presidency of the Mississippi Economic Council, the chairmanship of President George H. W. Bush’s National Advisory Council on Education, and charter membership of the United Methodist Church Commission on Religion and Race. This book brings together more than a dozen of Reed’s speeches over a fifty-year period (1956–2007). The Tupelo businessman discusses the events surrounding his talks about race relations within his church, his deep involvement in education with his close friend Governor William Winter and with President George H. W. Bush, and his own campaign for governor as a Republican in 1987. The author places this original material in historical context. The book illustrates how a private citizen with courage can effect positive change.