Word: mississippi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...white citizen born in Mississippi and raised in Georgia, I suppose I should tell my friends, "See, them damn niggers ain't fit for freedom." But I can't. Anyone with a shred of conscience cannot read your grippingly honest report without feeling, "There, but for the grace of white skin, go I." People so torn by desperation and racked by self-hatred, to a point where dignity no longer counts, need understanding...
...Early reports indicate extensive and encouraging voluntary compliance with the new act," began U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. "Regrettably, however, such responsible compliance is neither uniform nor complete." With that, Katzenbach last week ordered federal voting examiners into five more "dead-end" counties in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi; in all, federal registrars were now at work in 14 Deep South counties that have failed to comply with the new Voting Rights Act. In three of the five new counties, more than 100% of all voting-age whites were on the voting rolls, while as few as 4.6% of the Negroes...
Police in Mississippi's Amite County pointedly photographed Negroes waiting to register, menacingly asked them who their nearest white neighbors were. In Georgia's Baker County, a civil rights worker was knocked down seven courthouse steps by the sheriff when he brought Negroes in to register. In Mississippi's Oktibbeha County, a Negro woman who asked the sheriff for directions to the courthouse was gruffly told, "We don't let Nigras vote here." The locked door to the registrar's office in Alabama's Lee County bore the sign "Back Sept.1," and the office...
...were making some attempt to comply with the law. South Carolina's York County, where more than 600 Negroes were registered by local officials in two days, was a notable example. But in most of the counties in the areas covered by the act−Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and 26 counties in North Carolina−progress was at best glacial. Even so, Katzenbach remained reluctant to order massive federal intervention in the hope that Southern officials would begin to see the light...
...poll tax won't keep 'em from voting," Mississippi's infamous Senator Theodore Bilbo used to snort. "What keeps 'em from voting is Section 244 of the Constitution of 1890." That section stipulated that voters−Negro voters, anyway−must be able to interpret a state constitution that, as Bilbo chortled, "damn few white men and no niggers at all can explain...