I note the passing of former Mississippi Governor Bill Waller with sadness. His record wasn’t perfect, but he was an enlightened man who had real courage. He wasn’t successful, but he was a bulldog in his effort to prosecute Medgar Evers’ case. He defeated Evers’ brother to win the governor’s race in 1971.
Mr. Waller, a Democrat and self-described “redneck,” used his governorship from 1972 to 1976 to appoint blacks to administrative boards and commissions for the first time in post-Reconstruction Mississippi. He elevated three historically black colleges to university status, and he abolished the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, which had fought integration…
…Though Mr. Waller had not run on race issues, one of his first acts as governor was to name a black as a top adviser, attracting national publicity. He recruited the first blacks for the state’s highway patrol and appointed the first blacks to a planning committee for the Mississippi State Fair.
With a record like that, he’s deserves a moment of reflection from all of us. Compare him to Trent Lott, who not too long ago publicly regretted that Strom Thurmond wasn’t elected president in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket. Of course, Thurmond did carry Mississippi that year. Why? Because Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) pushed through a civil rights plank on the Democrat’s platform. And then President Truman followed up a few weeks after the convention by issuing an executive order that led to the integration of the armed services. Obviously, that’s not the kind of behavior that people like Trent Lott can support.
Gov. Waller moved Mississippi in the right direction. He had some Atticus Finch qualities. He’ll be missed.
Attention must be paid to those who make sincere attempts, however halting, to reach towards equality and justice. Thanks for this, BooMan. I had not heard of Waller before.
The period from 1968 until 1980 saw the brief establishment of politicians like Waller in the South. Jimmy Carter succeeded Lester Maddox in 1970 and rose to national prominence for an inaugural speech declaring the end of segregation (well, maybe not that directly). In SC, Robert McNair hired a young civil rights activist named James Clyburn as an aide. Waller was a part of that trend that briefly united workers, farmers, and African-Americans in a moderate-to-liberal coalition.
But 1972 was the year that Jesse Helms defeated Nick Galifianakis in a “he’s not us” campaign highlighting Galifianakis’s Greek ancestry.
And 1973 brought Rowe v. Wade and the issue that the segregationists could ride back into power – “killin’ sweet lil babies”. And tout their moral superiority. Like the split among urban ethnic Catholic Democrats, that issue split off the farmer-labor vote in the South. A split that was institutionalized by the politicization of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1978.
So don’t blame it all on Harry and Hubert and Lyndon.