African-American Rights in Mississippi

Joe DePiano

Rise to rights

February 24, 2012

Paper 1

Question 2

African-American rights in Mississippi were not obtained easily. As America was becoming more desegregated in the 1960's Mississippi resisted this movement. Mississippi was dominated by conservative southern democrats who claimed rights movement were in violation of the white man also believing in pro-slavery and anti civil right movements. The Southerners had strong beliefs and voted loyalty for the Democratic Party. Nationally though, the Democratic party broke away from segregation and adopted civil right planks in 1948 making the southern democrats the minority. In 1964 conservative republican Barry Goldwater won Mississippi whose voters were all white. At this time Mississippi was 45% black but only 5% of them were registered voters. This was shocking to most of the country being that Lyndon Johnson won the election in a landslide and Mississippi always votes democrat. The Republican Party was split in two. The south and west were conservative and the northeast was moderate liberal. Mississippi backed Goldwater because he believed in state rights even though he also believed in civil rights but not the civil rights act because it went against those state rights. His lost to Johnson impacted the whole Republican Party who lost a lot of seats in congress. This being a gift is disguise though as this allowed more open seats for conservatives to change American. Barry Goldwater is credited with the resurgence of the American conservatism movement.

Race was the leading factor to the rise of rights in Mississippi. As the country was intergrading and allowing African Americans rights Mississippi opposed that. The civil right acts of 1964 was an attempt to ease that integration but was met with violence and protesters in Mississippi impeding the hope that blacks would be treated with the same rights as the white man. The hate of the white man towards the black man fueled the black to over come segregation. The African-Americans though protested through civil disobediences, sit-ins, and protests fought for their rights rather than the violence whites were using.