A Populist's Dream

MOST ATTEMPTS to measure political progress in Mississippi consider only the political fortunes of black candidates, and therefore miss a significant trend: the gradual liberation of Mississippi progressives.

During the 1960s, most white Mississippi liberals were united only by their silence. To be sure, there were some "festering sores of liberalism," as one orator noted: Hodding Carter and Hodding Carter III, Patricia Derian, Kenneth Dean, Hazel Brannon Smith, James Silver, to name a few. But most whites who opposed Mississippi's state of madness were silenced by their fear of social and economic pressure and the very real threat of violence at the hands of racist monomaniacs.

It was that moral and political catatonia of most liberals which caused state NAACP President Aaron Henry to maintain that Southern whites would never be free until blacks were.

Today, blacks are gaining political freedom, expertise and considerable clout in some areas. At the same time, their new voting strength has pushed some old racist politicians into early retirement and encouraged progressive whites to try politics.

Last summer, after Harvard granted me sanctuary for a year, I quit my newspaper job and joined the Congressional campaign of Walter Brown, a friend from my college days at the University of Mississippi.

Brown, a 33-year-old lawyer, was serving his second term in the state legislature, and six others sought the fourth district seat vacated by the retirement of Charles Griffin. The district, 12 counties in southwest Mississippi, has about 202,000 voters, a third of them black. It contains Hinds County, site of the state capital and home of 40 per cent of the district's voters, and Jefferson County, political stronghold of Charles Evers.

Surprisingly, Brown edged into the runoff, helped considerably by an effective TV campaign and the foresight to be born with a surname that placed high on the ballot. But Bodron polled 33,000 votes, 40 per cent of the total, while Brown had only 16,000. The wide margin meant money for the runoff would be scarce.

However, Brown had the making of an improbable alliance. As a teenager he had worked in Washington for then-Congressman John Bell Williams, an oldline Mississippi conservative. Although an ideological chasm separated them politically, a close friendship remained.

Brown also had strong ties with blacks in Adams County, and he had done legal work for Mayor Charles Evers in nearby Fayette. He had a chance to forge an unprecedented coalition between blacks and white conservatives.

But Brown hadn't compiled his legislative record with an eye toward higher office. He had introduced a bill to prohibit carrying loaded firearms in pickup trucks, another to allow horse racing and on-track gambling in some counties, another to help day care centers obtain Federal funds, another to liberalize divorce laws. In short, no one was urging him to start house-hunting in Washington.

But Bodron had a record, too, and it was replete with questionable divisions of interest. He was lawyer for several small loan companies, while he served as chairman of the Senate committee which handled legislation regulating them. He had voted to let credit card companies collect 18 per cent interest in Mississippi, while Brown voted to hold the line at 12. And he had been retained as a lawyer by Litton Industries about the same time he was helping persuade Senators to put the full financial credit of Mississippi behind construction of Litton's giant shipyard on the Gulf Coast.

The match-up was a new populist's dream: the young, independent champion of the little man against the entrenched servant of the vested interests. At least, that's how we saw it.

Brown didn't win. Bodron held onto his 33,000, and we leaped to over 31,000. But Brown had run a surprisingly good race in a state which prizes age and experience. His future looks bright.

We learned some lessons. Chief among them was that it takes money to run a Congressional campaign, and that money comes mostly from conservative businessmen. It's hard to knock the banks and retail merchants and big industries and still collect campaign contributions.

We learned that you get black votes the way you get white votes, by knocking on doors and speaking at meetings about things people are interested in. The idea that the black vote is a monolith that can be delivered by a few leaders isn't true now, if it ever was. For example, we had the endorsement of Charles Evers, and we had many blacks working actively in the campaign. Yet we didn't carry Jefferson County, Ever's home. We were confident his endorsement would carry it for us, and we didn't work there. In the end, that might have cost us the election.

We learned that busing didn't seem to be a potent issue in the presence of other substantial issues. Brown avoided busing in the campaign, regarding it as an infinitely complex issue that was often seized on by racial demagogues.

In November, Bodron faced an attractive young Republican, Thad Cochran. A black minister ran as an independent and pulled about 10,000 normally Democratic votes. Bodron lost to Cochran by about 3,000.

It was the first time since Reconstruction the district had sent a Republican to Congress. White conservative Democrats don't have to be exceptionally acute to detect a message there.

Edwin Williams is a Nieman Fellow from the Delta Democrat-Times of Greenville, Miss.