![]() Williams Library, The University of Mississippi ) Eastland Collection, Archives and Special Collections, J.D. Senators John Stennis ( left) and James O. As part of President Johnson’s Great Society campaign of 1964, the War on Poverty promised to address and eradicate hunger throughout the nation by making it the “urgent business of all men and women of every race and every religion and every region.” 3 However, in a place like Mississippi, specifically the Delta and plantation counties, the eradication of hunger through antipoverty programs threatened the politics of white supremacy. James Eastland-ignited a war against the War on Poverty. According to Whitten, this uproar in support for voting rights was a critical component of the larger civil rights agenda initiated by the Brown decision of 1954, which he described as a “downhill road to integration, amalgamation, and ruin.” 2 Thus, to ensure that the “militant agitators” did not take control of “industry, agriculture, and even labor,” a group of three powerful Mississippi congressmen-Jamie Whitten, Sen. ![]() Whitten’s speech echoed the beliefs of those who held the most power in his district: the state’s emblematic white supremacist groups-the community-based White Citizens’ Council and the Mississippi legislature-sanctioned State Sovereignty Commission in particular-claimed that the rise of voting rights activism threatened the social, economic, and political lives of the white planter and middle classes in the Mississippi Delta. Angered by the intensification of voting rights activism and the looming poverty program in Mississippi, Whitten called attention to the power of the Delta Council, which controlled the region’s development projects and initiatives, to protect the state’s white supremacist system from “militant agitators.” He proclaimed to the group and other guests that, in his opinion, the struggle to attain voting rights for Blacks was “merely a front for a massive takeover by militant agitators” to obtain power “to control industry, agriculture, and even labor.” He encouraged the all-white council, who at the time had over three thousand members, to “continue to show restraint and respect for the law in the hope that, as it becomes clear to the rest of the country that the South is only a beachhead to these radical leaders for a take-over nation, the laws will be changed.” 1 Jamie Whitten of Mississippi delivered a speech at the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Delta Council in May 1965. ![]() Lyndon Baines Johnson declared his “unconditional war on poverty” and three months before the passing of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, US Rep. At the height of the American civil rights movement, just one year after Pres. ![]()
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