Word: finches
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Finch, a North Mississippi small town lawyer with rough-hewn friends, a crunching handshake and grammar that makes high school English teachers Cringe in disbelief, has conjured up the specter of southern populism--a specter that has emerged from the hinterlands of Mississippi now that the race issue ceases to becloud class divisions in the state with the lowest per capita income in the nation...
...Great White Chief," dressed himself completely in white--white suit, white shit, white tie, white hat and white shoes, symbolical of white supremacy, as well as set himself up as the champion of the farmer against predatory bankers and businessmen whom he saw as locusts devouring the farmer. Finch, however, won over 80 per cent of the black vote in his gubernatorial race. Finch is a color-blind Vardaman, a politician who has managed to unite the poor black and the poor white Mississippians instead of pitting them against one another, and as a result, has tapped a potent human...
...WEEKS AGO, Finch--riding a wave of grass roots popularity--accomplished what no predecessor in this century had ever done. Finch pushed a bill through the jealous and suspicious Mississippi Senate allowing him to serve two back-to-back four-year terms. In the past, Mississippi governors have perenially pleaded to the state's legislative bodies to pass a constitutional amendment permitting gubernatorial succession, but to no avail--despite the fact that these governors proved they had no ulterior motives by adding clauses insuring that the amendment would only affect future governors, not themselves. Suddenly, Finch is succeeding where...
Last week, in an effort to persuade members of the Mississippi House of Representatives--an even more independent and covetous body--to ratify the Senate's succession amendment, Finch flexed his political muscles. State representatives went off the record to journalists to say they faced intense pressure and even threats from Finch's supporters in the representatives' districts and threats to trim state payrolls of friends and relatives of legislators opposing succession. Finch's henchmen, the representatives complained, had begun assembling information on every lawmaker: their bankers, their drinking and social habits, their credit and business affairs and their private...
...Mississippi House had amassed too much power over the decades to be toppled in two weeks. The members stood up to Finch's intrepid challenge, and the amendment died in committee. Several days prior to the vote Finch had apparently called off his dogs. In a press conference after the vote Finch forewarned ominously, "Just because some of the prophets of gloom and doom say it can't be done...if it's the people's will, it is going to be done." As soon as Finch capitulated, the Jackson press corps began speculating that the entire escapade...