ABSTRACT
Aaron Henry was a leader of the civil rights movement in a state where racial segregation and exclusion from participation in public life was perhaps the most extreme in the United States on the eve of the national civil rights movement. Henry was originally associated principally with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but found favor with every civil rights entity that entered the campaign for change in Mississippi. Henry first organized a street movement in his hometown which then evolved into his taking a major role at the center of a movement that swept over the entire state in the early 1960s. Henry moved onto a broader stage to work among an ensemble of civil rights groups that were intent on escalating their challenges against the entire state of Mississippi. The most important symbolic event foreshadowing the expansion of the social movement into the realm of political mobilization was Henry's 1963 run for state governor.
