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199 Conclusions Lord, we ain’t what we wanna be—we ain’t what we gonna be—but, thank God, we ain’t what we was. —saying on the wall of the cofo office in jackson Their cause must become our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome. . . . But we will not accept the pace of stifled rights, the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest. For peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty. . . . Because all Americans must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right. All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race. —lyndon baines johnson to a joint session of congress, march 15, 1965 B y 1965 the movement’s fight seemed to be the nation’s. This condition passed quickly, however, as the country and the student-supported movement became caught up in the controversy over the meaning of Black Power, the allocation of funds for the War on Poverty, and the moral issues of the Vietnam War. The Mississippi movement was given its brief moment in the national spotlight, but its time was too short to mount enough pressure against the Mississippi power structure to overthrow it. After 1965 the Mississippi movement returned to being a local affair—as it had been before 1960. Nevertheless, the years 1960–65 mark a watershed in African American history, both on a national level and on the local level in Mississippi. During that period Mississippi was revealed to the country and the world as an example of southern white intransigency and totalitarian suppression of minority rights. Mississippi’s African American struggle was briefly revealed to the 200 student activism and civil rights in mississippi nation, and hope for change welled up in hearts thought to be apathetic and uncaring. People overcame fears and confronted their oppressors, and cracks appeared in the monolithic, closed society called Mississippi. In reality, however , this was only a beginning to the weakening of white supremacist rule in the state. After 1965, African American Mississippians were largely left alone to translate the gains of 1960–65 into real progress toward becoming full Mississippians. That story, important as it is, has been left untold because it is essentially the period after the civil rights movement’s concerted efforts in the state. By 1965 the legal battle for civil rights legislation on a national level had largely been won, even though the Civil Rights Act of 1968 did include a long-delayed protection clause for civil rights workers involved in voter registration. The Mississippi civil rights movement quickly became a local struggle to overcome poverty, educational inferiority, and the lack of political power within the state. Counties where the movement had developed extensively and where it was locally based remained the strongest locations of African American community activity, with rare exceptions. According Kenneth T. Andrews, there is a close correlation between the amount of movement activity in Mississippi counties and the degree of continued activity after 1965. Andrews points us to the conclusion that, where an active local movement developed before 1965, then even after COFO broke up and SNCC and CORE ceased activity in the state, local people continued to look after their own needs. In many cases they were joined by middle-class African Americans who had not previously been involved in the movement, and together they developed their own leadership cadres. This was certainly true in Holmes Country, which in 1967 sent the first African American, Robert Clark, to the state legislature since Reconstruction. Throughout this study of the Mississippi movement I have striven to substantiate the problems that confronted African Americans in Mississippi in their battle to become first-class citizens in a closed society. That battle was a slow and dangerous struggle against the Mississippi power structure that obdurately refused to give up its stranglehold over local African Americans. Furthermore, the federal government dragged its feet during 1960–65 until a national consensus pressured it into passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Nevertheless, even after the passage of these laws and the creation of the War on Poverty, the Mississippi power structure was able to reorganize and successfully block efforts by...

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