In the 2008 Presidential election, the state of Mississippi remained a very red state–no surprise there. But the color of the state in the bicolor world of American politics hides some of the most dynamic regional changes that have taken place in Mississippi as well as many other counties in other red states throughout the South. Yet, Mississippi holds special significance in race relations history. It was in the Mississippi delta region that some of the most violent race crimes were committed during the early 1960s, when activist blacks and whites came into the state to register black voters, as a method for invoking change in race relations and ending segregation. They were greeted by threats of violence and death. Medgar Evers, head of the NAACP in Mississippi, helped to direct the efforts of the young SNCC members until he was assassinated outside his home in Jackson, MS in 1963 by a white supremacist.
The twelve counties that are adjacent to the Mississippi River between Memphis and Vicksburg, Mississippi, proved to be among the most hostile and violent regions in the country in their opposition to end segregation. Segregation was an endemic component of life in those areas and poverty was pervasive: In the 1960s blacks in the region earned between $400-$600 a year. And, while the Civil War had been over for nearly a century, blacks were kept as indentured workers through laws that kept blacks working the plantation economy as long as they owed money to the plantation, which almost everyone did.
Although the young SNCC workers thought their only responsibility when arriving in the region was to register voters, they soon found themselves helping young blacks escape the slave conditions of poverty plantation work by arranging to get them put on a bus with a ticket for Chicago and making arrangements for them to be integrated into better paying jobs, while their families often stayed in Mississippi. Because the legal authorities helped keep the blacks tied to the plantations, the SNCC workers would often arrange for the bus to stop on the highway to meet the fleeing black, thus avoiding confrontation with the police. The region was poor and had changed little since the civil war. In the early 1960s, when these registration efforts got started, there were only about 200 black voters registered in Sunflower County and the overall vote was always in the red column. But this past year, 2008, the voter turnout in Sunflower County was gratifyingly different: 7,158 votes for Obama and 2,900 votes for McCain. An entire cluster of counties along the MIssissippi delta region went solidly into the blue column, despite state government attempts to intimidate the black vote by challenging the autnenticity of their registration. Labeling the state of Mississippi red may work for some time, but it is no longer homogeneously red and Obama’s candidacy helped to underscore how some counties may be blue for a long time.
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