William F. Winter and the New Mississippi: A Biography

5. Massive Resistance

83 5 MASSIVE RESISTANCE In the fall of 1953, William Winter was halfway through a second term as a Mississippi state legislator. He also had a struggling law practice in Grenada , managed the Grenada County farm, taught as an adjunct for Ole Miss, and held a part-time job with the Grenada Chamber of Commerce. As part of Winter’s Chamber duties, he helped organize Grenada County’s second annual Harvest Festival, the town’s first racially integrated community event. Weeks earlier, black citizens in Grenada had started their own Chamber of Commerce organization. Winter suggested that a representative from this new black Chamber join the Harvest Festival program . Less than a week before the event, his white Chamber colleagues agreed, and the head of the new black organization, Dr. Claude Walston, spoke on the same program as Senator John Stennis, the featured guest of the day. The November 21 event, which drew a racially mixed crowd of fifteen hundred, included a program of music, awards for the biggest cotton crops, and speeches, with Winter serving as master of ceremonies. The festivities concluded with a free barbeque. When Stennis addressed the crowd, he commended the community for their plan to expand cotton production “with the cooperation and understanding of both races.” Walston followed and praised the senator for “his efforts in helping to solve the race problems of the South.” All in all, the event represented for Winter the possibility that, despite segregation, blacks and whites could work together for the betterment of both races. He still believed in the need for racial segregation and thought it would remain intact in many areas of life for the foreseeable future. As he had for many years, however, Winter thought that gradual improvements in race relations were possible Massive Resistance 84 and believed that efforts, such as the integrated Harvest Festival, should be made to break down racial barriers whenever possible.1 Within six months, however, even such a minor breach in the segregated arrangements of Mississippi—inviting a black leader to speak at a public event organized by the white community—became an impossible position for a white politician to advance. Once the U.S. Supreme Court issued its May 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregated schools inherently unconstitutional, whites in Mississippi closed ranks in an effort to halt racial change. State leaders, including most of Winter’s legislative colleagues, embraced a strategy of massive resistance against federal pronouncements to end racial segregation and the increasingly active black civil rights movement, emboldened by the Brown decree. Any thoughts about promoting gradual adjustments in the South’s racial arrangements essentially evaporated in the post-Brown environment . Winter, however, continued to favor a moderate approach of gradual racial change and believed that massive resistance was a misguided strategy. Similar to his stance during the Dixiecrat legislative session of 1948, Winter dissented from massive resistance at times but did so in a way that prevented him from becoming a political pariah. He also tried to work within the system to bring a more moderate political leadership to power in Mississippi. After his first term in the Mississippi Legislature, Winter did not know if he would seek a second term. He looked forward to the opportunity to work with Senator Stennis, a Mississippi politician who shared more of his moderate sensibilities, and he went to Washington, D.C., unsure about his future plans. Winter began his new job in the spring of 1950 by working in Mississippi to help the senator prepare for his 1952 reelection campaign. Stennis sent Winter on a two-month trek around the state to “contact some of our friends there, make new contacts and size up the general situation.” In general, the senator wanted Winter to meet with a broad cross-section of the population, establishing relationships with “forward -looking men who have faith in the future, not men who are looking backward and who are extreme reactionaries.” Finally, Stennis advised Winter to pay particular attention to young people, “those who share the view points which are special to your generation.” Winter arrived in Washington in July 1950 with a large notebook full of details about Mississippians and their political views. Stennis rightly recognized that the Massive Resistance 85 trip not only collected valuable intelligence for his upcoming campaign, but also gave Winter the opportunity to “make new friends over...