JACKSON - Did the civil rights revolution in Mississippi during the 1960s unintentionally enable the rise of a conservative counterrevolution which remade the Southern political landscape in the 20th century?
Mississippi native Joseph Crespino, now a professor of history at Emory University, has crafted a fascinating volume that gives insightful validity to that theory.
His book, "In Search of Another Country," subtitled "Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution," documents how conservative Southerners, formerly the backbone of white supremacy, skillfully blunted the civil rights era's impact on the South's politics and created a powerful new Republican political structure in Dixie.
Importantly, as Crespino describes it, this modern Republican South has been able to cleverly sublimate its racial origins so as to link itself with the broader, national GOP conservative movement.
Crespino avoids giving any hint that his father-in-law is Jim Herring, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party. Herring, a former Democratic officeholder and statewide Democratic candidate, who a decade later became a state GOP leader, was a player in the counterrevolution, but his name is not mentioned.
That the scholarly Crespino steers his elegantly written, meticulously researched account of Mississippi's complex political transformation into a major Southern Republican base without revealing his own political persuasion is an extraordinary literary achievement.
"In Search of Another Country" is so rich with facts and details (with citations) tracing Mississippi's political evolution over the last half of the 20th century, that it immediately takes its place as a cornerstone volume to understand this state's convoluted political history.
Three landmark events, each with a racial undertone, are cited by Crespino as shaping the conservative counterrevolution: Barry Goldwater's sweep of Mississippi's vote in 1960; Richard Nixon's 1968 "Southern Strategy;" and Ronald Reagan launching his 1980 victorious presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair.
Crespino correctly establishes the racial link between Mississippi voting an incredible 87.1 percent for Republican Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election while Democratic President Lyndon Johnson was sweeping the nation in a landslide.
"Goldwater was the ideal candidate for Mississippi Republicans," Crespino writes, adding: "No action confirmed this status more than Goldwater's vote against the 1964 civil rights bill."
Noted by Crespino as a by-product of the Goldwater sweep was Mississippi's election of the first Republican congressman since Reconstruction. Smith County chicken farmer Prentiss Walker unseated 11-term Democratic Rep. Arthur Winstead in what then was the 3rd District. Walker served only one term, being defeated in 1966 when he ran for the U.S. Senate.
Mississippi Republican leader Clarke Reed, then head of the Southern Association of Republican chairmen, became a dominant figure in Nixon's 1968 "Southern Strategy," so-named because it focused on converting pro-segregation Southern Democrats to the GOP fold.
Although Mississippi gave its votes to Alabama's George Wallace rather than Nixon in the 1968 election, as Crespino points out, state GOP leaders such as Reed gained unprecedented access to the Nixon White House and used some of that influence to dilute the effect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
When Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign before a crowd of 15,000 at the Neshoba County Fair, Crespino writes: "Reagan invoked a mantra that sustained a generation of Southern segregationists, 'I believe in states' rights.'"
It's noteworthy, as Crespino points out, that the Neshoba fairground is located near the earthen dam where the murdered bodies of three young civil rights workers were found, but Reagan made no mention of the lynching that captured the nation's attention in 1964.
Reagan's election in 1980 was hailed as a "triumph" by the segregationist white Citizens' Council in its publication, "The Citizen." Crespino reproduces the cover of the Council publication bearing the photos of Ronnie and Nancy.
