JACKSON - In his "Rednecks, Redeemers and Race … Mississippi after Reconstruction, 1877-1917," historian Stephen Cresswell writes about an era that has been completely turned on its head in the 21st century.
Back then, newly enfranchised blacks were Republicans. White racists and elitists were Democrats who reestablished white supremacy in the post-Civil War era by violence and by writing a new state Constitution to eliminate black Republicans as a political threat.
No one then could conceive of Mississippi's political climate in 2006: when blacks are relegated to the Democratic Party, when blacks have the vote and hold office, even a seat in Congress, but their political clout has been marginalized; when the state's Republican Party is controlled by the white economic elites, and when a Republican is elected governor, guaranteeing his winning margin by waving the state flag that bears a reminder of the Old Confederacy.
Cresswell, a professor of history at West Virginia Wesleyan College and a scholar with previous works on the political and social history of Mississippi, has published "Rednecks, Redeemers and Race" as part of the Heritage of Mississippi Series funded by the Mississippi Historical Society and state Department of Archives and History. It's distributed by University Press of Mississippi.
On the book's jacket is a concise summation of its text: "A history of the paradoxical time when the state's technology advanced and race relations deteriorated."
If he characterizes the 1877 to 1917 era a paradoxical time, you can only imagine how Cresswell would contrast the state's political and racial landscape of today with that of the post-Reconstruction era.
He gives us a clue in the concluding chapter of the book, raising the question of whether Mississippi's history of that era was a story of "continuity or change." He says that question has long baffled noted Southern historians.
Two constants of Mississippi history stick out in the era about which Cresswell writes (and which exist until today). One is how the white population co-exists with the state's large black population; the other, the state's struggle to reach the nation's political and economic mainstream.
The four decades after Reconstruction saw a transformation on many fronts in Mississippi - the advent of new technologies in agriculture, street cars, and yes, electric lights. Industrialization arrived in the form of textile mills that spun the state's cotton; naval stores (turpentine and rosins) and sawmill operations which thrived off the plentiful virgin timber until it was exhausted.
By 1880, Cresswell writes, eight textile mills spun and wove cotton into cloth, only to be shipped elsewhere for garments. Towns grew up around the large textile and sprawling timber mills. Logging towns such Wisner and Cohay flourished for a time but later disappeared from the scene.
Mississippi Mills, located in Wesson (so named for Col. J. M. Wesson, who founded the mill), was the state's biggest textile operation, according to Cresswell's account.
Wesson's mill attracted two New Orleans businessmen to buy the operation and launch a major face-lifting of the plant, turning it into an impressive factory with a facade six stories high, along with three clock towers eight stories high. Hundreds of men, women and children (13- and 14-year-olds) worked in the mill, providing paying jobs for many luckless small white farmers.
The mill's progressive co-owner and manager, William Oliver, brought electric lights to Wesson the next year after Thomas Edison first demonstrated his incandescent light bulb. Somewhat remarkably, the little town of Wesson had electric lights before most New Yorkers.
An economic recession in the 1890s, stricter child labor laws enacted by the Legislature and rising cotton prices sent Mississippi Mills rapidly into debt. By 1909 it was closed, dealing a crippling blow to what had become a thriving town.
The old white Confederates vowed that after losing the Civil War, they would win the peace, finding many devices to keep the black labor force under white control and politically impotent, Cresswell's research notes.
By the early 1890s, lynching and "white-capping" were widespread. Only a rare courageous white official, such as Judge J. B. Chrisman of Copiah and Lincoln counties, pushed for convictions of whitecappers. Once in Brookhaven when an armed mob of white cappers rode up to his courthouse to free some of their colleagues, Chrisman stood down the mob even as their pistols were aimed at his head.
On the political front, Cresswell writes, clever "redeemers" such as former Brig. Gen. James Z. George took control of the state from the Republicans and effectively ended Reconstruction. While still a U.S. senator, George was the architect behind provisions in 1890 state Constitution that legally disenfranchised black voters for the next 70 years.
While white Democrats were consolidating their political control of state and local governments, agrarian interests made deep inroads into the party's ranks by the end of the century. They pushed the national agenda of the Progressive movement, installing the party primary system and by 1908 making Mississippi the first legally "dry" state. Prohibition would last 58 years.
