ELECTIONS: Mississippi Mud

Mississippi, the South’s lowest ranking state in per capita income and educational spending, last week took its place in the political scale. Winner of the Democratic nomination for Governor (and automatic election next November) was as bitter a racist as inhabits the nation, Ross Robert Barnett, 61, who had tried for Governor twice before and lost, won this time by a vote of 230,000 to 195,000 over Lieutenant Governor Carroll Gartin, mostly on the basis of statements such as: “The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him. His forehead slants back. His nose is different. His lips are different, and his color is sure different.”

Ross Barnett. the tenth son of a Confederate veteran, is a prosperous Jackson damage-suit lawyer and a Baptist deacon, and, happily for his campaign, he talks and acts like a back country bumpkin, a campaign posture that wowed the rednecks. In his Jim Crow campaign, he resorted to every sort of distortion and epithet. He defied the U.S. Supreme Court, hurled Mississippi mud at Gartin (whom he called “Little Boy Blue”) and Gartin’s patron, moderate (for Mississippi) Governor J. P. Coleman. Last fortnight in Poplarville, scene of the recent lynching of a Negro named Mack Parker (TIME. May 4 et seq.). Gartin was greeted by Barnett posters on every telephone pole: “Remember Hungary. Remember Little Rock. Remember the occupation of Poplarville by J. P. Coleman and the FBI . . . If Gartin is elected, the next occupation forces may be the N.A.A.C.P. and specially trained goon squads from the Justice Department.”

One of Barnett’s first acts as Governor will be a conference with his particular hero, Arkansas’ Governor Orval Faubus and like-minded Southern segregationists. “I am going to put forth every effort,” he promised, “to organize Southern Governors to create and crystallize public opinion throughout the nation with reference to our traditions and Southern way of life.” Crowed State Democratic Chairman Bidwell Adam after the election: “I want to say I’m thankful to God that Ross Barnett has saved Mississippi.”