ABSTRACT
Behind the Magnolia Curtain, registration tricks kept black voter registration extremely low. Only 5.2 per cent of blacks could vote, compared to the South’s average of one-third of blacks and two-thirds of whites. In heavilyblack Holmes county the registrar disqualified all but 0.02 per cent of blacks and fraudulently enrolled more than 100 per cent of whites. In Amite, Tallahatchie, and Walthall counties, not a single black voted. As a result, no Mississippi black had held elective office since Reconstruction ended in 1877. Even if blacks voted, there was no choice but the Democratic party of James Vardaman, Theodore Bilbo, James Eastland, and Ross Barnett, rabid racists all. In campaigning for governor in 1903, Vardaman called for the repeal of the 14th and 15th Amendments and described the Negro as ‘a lazy, lustful animal which no conceivable amount of training can transform into a tolerable citizen.’ The white man, he averred, ‘would be justified in slaughtering every Ethiop on earth to preserve unsullied the honor of one Caucasian home.’
