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2 Mississippi's Massive Resistance to Black Political Empowerment As early as 1958 Mississippi's leading newspaper, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, urged the "custodians of Mississippi's 'white supremacy' machinery" to "take a serious, studied look" at the racial composition of the state's congressional districts "in view of the NAACP's vigorous drive for Negro voting rights." The newspaper's city editor noted that with a black majority in Congressman Frank Smith's Third District ("every one of the 11 counties ... has a negro majority") and substantial black concentrations in the Fourth District ("seven of the thirteen counties have negro majorities") "it can be readily seen that the full employment of the ballot by the negro would represent a serious threat to 'white supremacy.' ,,1 Four years later, although black candidates for Congress in the 1962 election got few votes and the Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News concluded that the results showed "rather clearly that there is no sizeable Negro bloc vote in Mississippi," the paper nevertheless predicted "the Legislature can be expected to re-district the state so as to split the Second District if a Negro's election ever appears imminent there.,,2 Thus were the "custodians of Mississippi's 'white supremacy' machinery" forewarned of the "serious threat to 'white supremacy''' posed by the potential black vote. The tremendous increase in black voter registration following passage of the Voting Rights Act triggered a "massive resistance" reaction by white political leaders aimed at nullifying the newly gained black vote. Deprived by federal legislation of the legal authority to prevent blacks from registering to vote, the state's white leadership resorted to a massive resistance strategy of employing numerous devices to perpetuate white control at all levels of government: 1. From 1966 to 1982 the Mississippi Legislature gerrymandered Mississippi's five congressional districts to prevent the election of a black member of Congress by dividing the predominantly black Delta region among three of the five districts, denying black voters a voting majority in any district. 2. From 1966 to 1979 the Mississippi Legislature denied black vot- Massive Resistance 35 ers the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice to state legislative seats through the use of multimember legislative districts. These multimember districts employed at-large voting for two or more state senators or representatives in majority-white countywide or multicounty districts to submerge black population concentrations that were large enough for separate legislative representation. 3. Pursuant to state legislation enacted in 1966, fourteen counties switched from district to at-large elections for county boards of supervisors (the county governing boards), and twenty-two counties switched from district to at-large county school board elections. After at-large county elections were blocked by lawsuits and Justice Department objections under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, almost half of Mississippi's eighty-two counties gerrymandered county supervisors ' district boundaries to dilute black voting strength and to prevent the election of black county officials. 4. Beginning in 1966, the state legislature enacted a number of statutes designed to prevent the election of black candidates, including bills that increased the filing requirements for independent candidates and eliminated elections for certain offices. In 1966, 1970, 1975, 1976, and 1979 the legislature also enacted discriminatory "open primary " bills that eliminated the opportunity to win a general election with less than a majority of the vote and instituted a general election runoff requirement. 5. Anticipating black registration increases, forty-six cities and towns switched to at-large city council elections to prevent the election of black city council members beginning in 1962. In addition, many of Mississippi's cities and towns-including Jackson, the state's largest city-retained preexisting at-large election systems after the Voting Rights Act became law, resulting in the exclusion of black representation in city government. 6. Other devices, such as discriminatory municipal annexations and last-minute polling place changes, also have been used to dilute black voting strength. Most of these vote-dilution stratagems were products of the 1966 regular and special sessions of the Mississippi Legislature, referred to as the political massive resistance session. This chapter focuses on that session of the Mississippi Legislature and analyzes the political context in which these vote-dilution devices were conceived, the legislative history of their enactment, and their impact on the first statewide elections following passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1967. Political commentators have previously applied the term "massive resistance" primarily to the efforts of southern states to resist...

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