Mississippi Matters
Shownotes
November 12, 2026
Mississippi has a new US senator-elect, as Scott Colom becomes the third Black senator from the state, and first ever elected by the people, Senators Hiram R. Revels and Blanche K. Bruce were chosen by the legislature, in the years immediately after the Civil War, The backlash against Black political power was ferocious in Mississippi, where Black people outnumbered white people in 39 of the state's 75 counties, In 1890, a convention rewrote the state constitution to enforce white supremacy by making it virtually impossible for Black people to vote, Mississippi was the state on which voting rights activists focused efforts, especially after the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955, Medgar Evers urged the NAACP to get involved in calling for justice for Till, and he led voter registrations drives in the face of growing white resistance, On June 12, 1963, he was shot and killed by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of a white supremacist Citizen Council, Colom told Evers’s story in one of the most powerful ads of the campaign, "[Evers] was killed for helping Mississippians vote…" he said. "Use your vote and honor everyone who died for that right.” In his victory speech, he said, “…it’s local people who had faith that Mississippi can make progress … it’s not something that I did, it’s something that we did. … All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this,” Colom said. "I had the courage to understand that we could show the country that Mississippi matters."
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