Spinning Hate: Mississippi’s Post-Brown PR Offensive and the Secret Campaign Against ‘Agitators,’ 1956-1960

Abstract

After the US Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954, the Mississippi Legislature approved several laws designed to fight integration and federalize civil rights. Among the legislation was the creation of the state Sovereignty Commission, which saw preserving white supremacy as good public policy. This study examines the efforts of the agency’s first public relations director to carry out that mission through both standard public relations practices and far more nefarious methods of coercion and intimidation against those perceived as threats to segregation.