Economic history http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/ en Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers Lesson Plan http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/node/7178 <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--new-lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers Lesson Plan</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-issue--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-issue.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-issue.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-issue field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/issue/farmers-without-land-the-plight-of-white-tenant-farmers-and-sharecroppers" hreflang="en">Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--new-lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/105" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">alanwheat</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--new-lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Fri, 09/24/2021 - 14:22</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-students-will-bullets--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-students-will-bullets.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-students-will-bullets.html.twig x field--text.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-students-will-bullets field--type-text field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Students Will</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item">Distinguish tenant farming and sharecropping </div> <div class="field__item">Analyze the racial implications of tenant farming and sharecropping </div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-materials--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-materials.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-materials.html.twig x field--text.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-materials field--type-text field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Materials</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item">Computer/tablet with internet access </div> <div class="field__item">Earbuds/headphones </div> <div class="field__item">Paper and writing utensils </div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-curricular-connections--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-curricular-connections.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-curricular-connections.html.twig x field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-curricular-connections field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Curricular Connections</div> <div class="field__item"><h4 paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{139}" paraid="1266613859"><em>Seventh Grade Compacted - US History from Exploration to Reconstruction/ Civics and the World </em></h4> <ul><li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{145}" paraid="1271865418">7C.15.2. - Trace the economic changes in the post-Civil War South, including: Lincoln’s Plan, Wade-Davis Bill, Johnson’s Plan, Radical Reconstruction. </li> <li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{152}" paraid="560674990">7C.15.3 - Distinguish the roles of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments in expanding liberty.  </li> <li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{159}" paraid="1661902958">7C15.4 - Examine the Southern resistance to Reconstruction reforms, including: Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, Ku Klux Klan, etc. </li> </ul><h4 paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{166}" paraid="1346216340"><em>Eighth Grade: US History Exploration to 1877 </em></h4> <ul><li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{172}" paraid="1869774619">8.10.2 - Trace the economic changes in the post- Civil War South, including: Lincoln’s Plan, Wade-Davis Bill, Johnson’s Plan, Radical Reconstruction.  </li> <li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{179}" paraid="393781130">8.10.3 - Distinguish the roles of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments in expanding liberty.  </li> <li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{186}" paraid="1778874642">8.10.4 - Examine the Southern resistance to Reconstruction reforms, including: Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, Ku Klux Klan, etc. </li> </ul><h4 paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{193}" paraid="1629969444"><em>Mississippi Studies </em></h4> <ul><li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{199}" paraid="555579554">MS.6.3 - Detail the effects of the Civil War on Mississippi’s economy. </li> <li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{206}" paraid="1961103329">MS.7.2 - Trace the changes in Mississippi’s economy and technology in the decades following Reconstruction. </li> <li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{213}" paraid="626617696">MS.9.4 - Analyze the current trends and historic record of poverty and wealth distribution in Mississippi. </li> </ul><h4 paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{220}" paraid="1823658856"><em>US History: 1877 to Present </em></h4> <ul><li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{226}" paraid="559196020">US.1.2 - Compare the changing role of the American farmer, including: establishment of the Granger movement and the Populist Party and agrarian rebellion over currency issues. </li> <li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{237}" paraid="328819536">US.6.3 - Analyze President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as a response to the economic crisis of the Great Depression, including: the effectiveness of New Deal programs in relieving suffering, achieving economic recovery, and promoting organized labor. </li> </ul></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-teaching-levels--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-teaching-levels.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-teaching-levels.html.twig * field--string.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-teaching-levels field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Teaching Levels</div> <div class="field__item">Grades 7 through 12</div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-lesson--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-lesson.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-lesson.html.twig x field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-lesson field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Lesson</div> <div class="field__item"><ol><li paraeid="{7b016fd4-9763-4494-aea8-486fe035ff7d}{254}" paraid="1124700466">The teacher will overview the economic instability for most people in the antebellum and postbellum South. Though some of the world’s wealthiest planters lived in the southern region, most people lived in poverty, White and Black. It is important to note that the poverty of 19th and 20th century African Americans is a direct result of enslavement. Many of those effects linger today. This activity will compare the postbellum experiences of the two. </li> <li paraeid="{407ba725-7417-439b-9ddf-b7f0aa2ca304}{48}" paraid="934048420">Students will individually read "Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers" article. </li> <li paraeid="{407ba725-7417-439b-9ddf-b7f0aa2ca304}{59}" paraid="738692707">Students will respond to the following discussion questions in groups of two and three. Afterward, each group will summarize their discussion to the class.  <ul><li paraeid="{407ba725-7417-439b-9ddf-b7f0aa2ca304}{70}" paraid="912885528">What distinguishes sharecropping from tenant farming? </li> <li paraeid="{407ba725-7417-439b-9ddf-b7f0aa2ca304}{77}" paraid="730235018">How might race impact whether an individual is a tenant farmer or sharecropper? </li> <li paraeid="{407ba725-7417-439b-9ddf-b7f0aa2ca304}{84}" paraid="86066254">Why did the crop-lien system limit economic mobility? </li> <li paraeid="{407ba725-7417-439b-9ddf-b7f0aa2ca304}{91}" paraid="1331604585">What were the consequences of the Agricultural Adjustment Act? </li> </ul></li> <li paraeid="{407ba725-7417-439b-9ddf-b7f0aa2ca304}{98}" paraid="1807759441">Each group will then view the short videos on <a href="https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/sharecropping/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">PBS: Slavery By Another Name – Sharecropping</a>.  </li> <li paraeid="{407ba725-7417-439b-9ddf-b7f0aa2ca304}{114}" paraid="300693305">Employing the information provided by PBS: Slavery By Another Name and "Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers," students will complete a reflection writing assignment comparing the racial implications for tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Students are encouraged to use the discussion questions above to guide their writing.  </li> </ol></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author-nlp--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-author-nlp.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-author-nlp.html.twig * field--string.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author-nlp field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Drew Gardner</div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme-nlp--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-theme-nlp.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-theme-nlp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme-nlp field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/21" hreflang="en">Industry and Agriculture</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period-nlp--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period-nlp.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-time-period-nlp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period-nlp field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4" hreflang="en">Cotton Kingdom, 1833–1865</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5" hreflang="en">The World Remade, 1866–1902</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6" hreflang="en">Promise and Peril, 1903–1927</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7" hreflang="en">Bridging Hardship, 1928-1945</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/8" hreflang="en">Forging Ahead, 1946–Present</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-preparation-links--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-preparation-links.html.twig * field--node--new-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-preparation-links.html.twig * field--link.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-preparation-links field--type-link field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Preparation</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="http://mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/228/farmers-without-land-the-plight-of-white-tenant-farmers-and-sharecroppers" target="_blank">&quot;Farmers Without Land&quot;, one copy per student </a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/sharecropping/" target="_blank">PBS: Slavery By Another Name - Sharecropping</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Fri, 24 Sep 2021 19:22:19 +0000 alanwheat 7178 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904 Lesson Plan http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/lesson-plan/minnie-geddings-cox-and-the-indianola-affair-lesson-plan <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904 Lesson Plan</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Mon, 04/16/2018 - 12:59</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><h2>Overview</h2> <p>In January 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to accept the resignation of Minnie Geddings Cox, postmistress for the city of Indianola and Mississippi’s first African American postmistress. Roosevelt subsequently closed Indianola’s post office, and it remained closed for more than a year. The newspapers called the incident the “Indianola Affair.” Raised by business owner parents and educated at one of the premier schools for aspiring African American women, Cox sought opportunities beyond the traditional expectations for women of the time. In 1891, President Benjamin Harrison appointed Cox to the position of postmistress for Holmes County, making her the first African American postmistress in Mississippi, and in 1897, newly-elected President William McKinley appointed Cox as postmistress of Sunflower County. The college educations, land and property holdings, civil servant positions, and comfortable salaries of Minnie and her husband, Wayne Wellington Cox, placed them firmly near the top of the social and economic hierarchy in the region. Around 1902, however, whites in the Mississippi Delta, agitated by the combination of an economic depression, a power grab by the southern wing of the Republican Party, and an aggressive political contest for governor, channeled their anxieties onto African Americans, and Cox found herself in the crosshairs of this conflict.</p> <h2>Curricular Connections</h2> <p>Mississippi Studies Framework: Competencies 1, 4, and 5</p> <h2>Teaching Level</h2> <p>Grades 9-12</p> <h2>Materials/Equipment</h2> <ul><li><em>Mississippi History</em> Now article, “Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904”</li> <li>Board</li> <li>Data projector</li> <li>Computer and internet access</li> <li>Paper</li> <li>Pen/pencil</li> <li>Paper</li> <li><a href="/sites/default/files/files/Indianola-Affair-Lesson-Plan-Graphic-Organizer.docx" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Graphic Organizer</a></li> </ul><h2>Objectives</h2> <p>The students will:</p> <ol><li>Identify examples of the factors that played a role in the Indianola Affair.</li> <li>Write a summary of a nonfiction article.</li> <li>Examine personal thoughts about an historical event.</li> </ol><h2>Opening the Lesson</h2> <p>The teacher will ask for student volunteers to share answers to the following questions:</p> <ol><li>What was life like in the Mississippi during the late 1800s-early 1900s?</li> <li>What type of issues were prevalent in society during this period? The teacher will tell the students that they will have an opportunity to study social, political, and economic issues that impacted the state through the life story of Minnie Geddings Cox who lived in Indianola, Mississippi. During the opening of the lesson, the teacher can use the pictures included with the lesson plan as a part of the class discussion.</li> </ol><h2>Developing the Lesson</h2> <ol><li>The teacher will instruct the students to read the <em>Mississippi History</em> Now article, “Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904.”</li> <li>After their initial reading, the teacher will instruct students to reread the article. During the second reading of the article, the teacher will instruct the students to record information on the Graphic Organizer provided with this lesson plan. The students can work alone or with a partner as they reread and record information during this segment of the lesson.</li> <li>Once the students complete their graphic organizer, the teacher will instruct each student to use their Graphic Organizer to write a summary of the article.</li> <li>Next, the teacher will conduct a class discussion about the article. During the class discussion, the teacher will ask for student volunteers to share information from their Graphic Organizer and article summary.</li> <li>After the class discussion, the teacher will ask the students to write a reaction paper about their personal thoughts/reaction to what they learned about the Indianola Affair.</li> </ol><h2>Closing the Lesson</h2> <p>The teacher will ask the students to respond to the following questions:</p> <ol><li>Why is it important to study the Indianola Affair?</li> <li>Do you see any similarities or connections between the Indianola Affair and other historical events that you have studied?</li> </ol><h2>Assessing the Lesson</h2> <ul><li>Class participation</li> <li>Graphic organizer</li> <li>Summary</li> <li>Reaction paper</li> </ul><h2>Extending the Lesson</h2> <ul><li>Students can research the political careers of Mississippi governors and U. S. presidents mentioned in the <em>Mississippi History</em> Now article, “Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904.”</li> <li>Students can research other events in state and national history during 1902 to 1904.</li> <li>The teacher can follow-up this lesson with other <em>Mississippi History</em> Now articles about race and/or civil rights in Mississippi history.</li> </ul><p><em>Karla Smith is the Social Studies Department Chair at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College’s Jefferson Davis Campus.</em></p> <h2>Other related <em>Mississippi History</em> Now articles</h2> <ul><li><a href="/issue/mississippi-constitution-of-1890" rel="noopener" target="_blank">About the Mississippi Constitution of 1890</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/john-marshall-stone-thirty-first-and-thirty-third-governor-of-mississippi-1876-1882-1890-1896" rel="noopener" target="_blank">John Marshall Stone: Thirty-first and Thirty-third Governor of Mississippi: 1876-1882; 1890-1896</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/james-kimble-vardaman-thirty-sixth-governor-of-mississippi-1904-1908" rel="noopener" target="_blank">James Kimble Vardaman: Thirty-sixth Governor of Mississippi: 1904-1908</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/was-mississippi-a-part-of-progressivism" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Was Mississippi a Part of Progressivism?</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/ida-b-wells-a-courageous-voice-for-civil-rights" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Ida B. Wells: A Courageous Voice for Civil Rights</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/isaiah-t-montgomery-1847-1924-part-I" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Isaiah T. Montgomery: 1847-1924 (Part I)</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/isaiah-t-montgomery-1847-1924-part-ii" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Isaiah T. Montgomery: 1847-1924 (Part II)</a></li> </ul></div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-lp-author--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-lp-author.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-lp-author.html.twig * field--string.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-lp-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Karla Smith</div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-issue--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-issue.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-issue.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-issue field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/issue/minnie-geddings-cox-and-the-indianola-affair" hreflang="en">Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme-lp--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-theme-lp.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-theme-lp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme-lp field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Theme</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/9" hreflang="en">African American</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/23" hreflang="en">Mississippi Government</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/29" hreflang="en">Women&#039;s history</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period-lp--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period-lp.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-time-period-lp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period-lp field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Time Period</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5" hreflang="en">The World Remade, 1866–1902</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6" hreflang="en">Promise and Peril, 1903–1927</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Mon, 16 Apr 2018 17:59:00 +0000 usnext 7165 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904 http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/minnie-geddings-cox-and-the-indianola-affair <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--issue.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--issue.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--issue.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Mon, 04/16/2018 - 12:58</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 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<!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> by Shennette Garrett-Scott <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-theme.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-theme.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/9" hreflang="en">African American</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/23" hreflang="en">Mississippi Government</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/29" hreflang="en">Women&#039;s history</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-time-period.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5" hreflang="en">The World Remade, 1866–1902</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6" hreflang="en">Promise and Peril, 1903–1927</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--issue.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>In January 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to accept the resignation of Minnie Geddings Cox, postmistress for the city of Indianola and Mississippi’s first African American postmistress. Roosevelt subsequently closed Indianola’s post office, and it remained closed for more than a year. The newspapers referred to the post office closing as the “Indianola Affair.” Cox’s role in the Indianola Affair, however, has been reduced to a footnote in early twentieth-century United States history. Except for a scant mention in history textbooks, Cox has almost disappeared from public memory, and her experiences have been rendered subtext for what the Indianola Affair was <em>really</em> about. For most scholars, the affair is merely a background sketch to the more important, central dramas of James K. Vardaman’s 1902 election as governor under Mississippi’s new direct primary system, the failure of two-party politics in the early twentieth-century South, and debates over Roosevelt’s progressiveness on the question of race.</p> <p>The Indianola Affair and its central cast of characters tell a much more complicated story of historical transformations in the early twentieth century that had far-reaching consequences. The key to understanding the Indianola Affair necessitates careful “blocking,” a theatrical term that describes moving actors around in a scene. The actors’ placement and movements, rather than dialogue, convey their inner motivations and the deeper significance of their actions. It is critical to place Cox back at center stage, but doing so presents a considerable challenge. Only one letter and no diaries or interviews by Cox have been preserved in the archival record, and she left no personal record that scholars can use to hear her voice. Nevertheless, it is important that scholars attempt to reconstruct stories like Cox’s that have been drowned out by the cacophony of louder, better-documented historical voices. When Cox’s own experiences are returned to the forefront, the Indianola Affair not only remains an important facet of American political history, but it takes a more prominent place within the long history of the black liberation struggle in the United States. Moreover, it also blurs the stark divide between accommodation and protest as strategies in early twentieth-century African American political thought.</p> <h2>Delta Postmistress</h2> <p>Minnie M. Geddings was born in Lexington, Mississippi, in March of 1869 to former slaves, William and Elizabeth Geddings. Few details exist about her early life, but it appears that she lived a life of some privilege compared to most other African Americans living in the Mississippi Delta at the time. As business owners, Minnie’s parents were able to send her to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was part of one of the largest cohorts of women (over 100) attending Fisk during the period. While at Fisk, she recognized the leadership potential of educated African American women. Geddings graduated from Fisk’s normal school program around 1888, and she moved to Indianola to teach in the new segregated public school. Her future husband, Wayne Wellington Cox, helped establish the school in the early 1880s and served as its principal. The two married in October of 1889, and they later had one daughter, Ethyl.</p> <p>The Coxes lived on the predominantly white side of the railroad tracks in Indianola in a two-story frame house on Faisonia Street. In terms of education and income, the Coxes shared more in common with their white professional-class neighbors, who were doctors, merchants, and office workers, than they did with the majority of African Americans in the Mississippi Delta, who were mostly limited to servile positions such as domestics and low-skilled laborers. The Coxes maintained connections with the African American community, although from positions of greater privilege and influence. The Coxes spent several years in the town as educators. Nearly two dozen farmers rented land on a plantation in Sunflower County that Minnie owned, and thirty families rented properties that both Coxes owned in Indianola and other locations throughout the Mississippi Delta.</p> <p>Wayne Cox, like many ambitious African American men throughout the country, remained active in the Republican Party. He controlled federal patronage positions at the local level for African American and white Republicans, as well as some white Democrats. Setting aside Wayne’s political influence, however, Cox probably pursued the postmistress position on her own. She sought her husband’s assistance rather than his permission in order to accomplish her own goals. Raised by business owners and educated at one of the premier schools for aspiring African American women, Cox sought opportunities beyond the traditional expectations for women of the time. In 1891, President Benjamin Harrison appointed Cox to the position of postmistress for Holmes County, making her the first African American postmistress in Mississippi. However, she was not, as many sources assert, the first African American postmistress in the United States. At least twelve African American women served as postmistresses in the nineteenth century. Minnie lost her appointment when a Democratic president (Grover Cleveland) took office in 1894. However, when Republican William McKinley won the presidential election in 1897, he appointed Cox as postmistress of Sunflower County.</p> <p>Cox operated the Sunflower County post office that served over 3,000 patrons a year and operated out of the Cohen’s Brooklyn Bridge Store in Indianola’s central business district. She installed a telephone for customers’ use, at her own expense, and also opened the post office for a few hours on Sundays after church services for her customers’ convenience. Cox even used her own money to pay delinquent postal box rents for both white and African American customers. Cox performed well in the position, earning an “Excellent” rating from federal postal inspectors. In 1900, due to the volume of mail passing through the Indianola post office, President McKinley promoted Cox to third-class postmaster. The promotion came with a new four-year appointment and an increase in salary to $1,100 a year (about $32,200 in today’s dollars)—a very significant sum at that time. As a teacher, she would have earned only a third of that amount. The Coxes’ college educations, land and property holdings, civil servant positions, and comfortable salaries placed them firmly near the top of the social and economic hierarchy in the region—and in the crosshairs of mounting racial and political tensions.</p> <h2>White agitation</h2> <p>Around 1902, whites in the Mississippi Delta channeled their anxieties onto African Americans. Their anxieties grew from the combination of an economic depression, a power grab by the southern wing of the Republican Party, and an aggressive political contest for governor. Cox found herself in the crosshairs of these conflicts. As the Mississippi Delta slid into an economic depression at the turn of the twentieth century, Cox’s relationship with the white residents of Sunflower County worsened in proportion to the county’s economic fortunes. Plummeting cotton prices pushed white farm owners and laborers down the slippery slope of tenancy and debt peonage. After two seasons of failed crops, white farmers, business owners, and workers suffered financially. They resented the success of African Americans like the Coxes and scapegoated African Americans for the reversal in whites’ economic fortunes.</p> <p>Political intrigue also compounded Cox’s troubles. President Roosevelt made modest moves to strengthen and reform the Republican Party in the South, which many white Southerners saw, in the words of the Greenwood Commonwealth’s then-editor James K. Vardaman, as federal efforts to promote “negro domination.” Closer to home, the Mississippi governor’s race of 1903 also increased the pressures on Cox. Vardaman, who was a Democratic candidate for the office, committed himself to a political platform that ensured the gulf between the races would remain interminable and impassable.</p> <h2>James Kimble Vardaman</h2> <p>Vardaman was no stranger to Mississippi politics. He had served two terms in the state legislature but failed to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor on two prior occasions. The state’s 1902 Primary Law provided Vardaman with an opportunity to gain the political office that had previously eluded him. In his direct appeals to voters, Vardaman milked racial divisions and animosities to his political advantage. His platform called for such draconian policies as ending all tax support for African American schools in the state and repealing both the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U. S. Constitution. Ironically, other aspects of Vardaman’s politics fell within the policies of political progressivism. The open primary system represented, according to reformers, a positive move away from nominations by state convention, a system that was rife with corruption. The open primary created by the 1902 Primary Law increased the democratic potential of all white men in the state, regardless of class or property-holding status. The 1890 Mississippi Constitution, the first in the United States to disenfranchise African American men, made sure African Americans were not imagined as part of either democratic or progressive reforms.</p> <p>Haunted by two previous failures, Vardaman shook thousands of hands, visited dozens of Mississippi towns, and penned scores of editorials warning that “negro domination” posed a threat to white civilization and democracy. He singled out Cox as a particular threat. When Vardaman stumped in Indianola, he berated white Indianolans for allowing a “negro wench” to handle their mail. In his campaign for the hearts and minds of locals, he appealed to white Mississippians’ democratic ideals, as well as their racial fears and prejudices.</p> <p>Vardaman’s venom reinforced rather than formed the political anxieties, economic fears, and racial discontent within Mississippi. Outnumbered by African Americans two to one, white Indianolans felt it important to send a message to the city’s African American citizens that they should remain “in their place.” Whites from all classes and backgrounds signed petitions urging Roosevelt to remove Cox from her position as postmistress and replace her with a white man. At a public meeting in October of 1902, civic and business leaders denounced Cox, lacing their threats with racial epithets. Some whites claimed African Americans loitered, played cards, and gambled at the post office. The town’s white civic and business elite deployed language rooted in racial and sexual stereotypes that disempowered African American women and justified sexual and mob violence against them. The charged rhetoric was one way whereby whites projected sexual and racial degeneracy onto public spaces. The post office, like stores, trains, and courthouses, became a site of struggle over white power and black subservience.</p> <p>Wayne Cox appealed to his white political friends and the U. S. Postmaster General for help in defusing the situation in Indianola, but these individuals could do very little against the open and covert threats of violence by local whites against Cox. Fearing that a white mob would destroy the post office, Minnie Cox wrote a U. S. Postal Inspector in early December of 1902 “if I don’t resign there will be trouble.” Her fears were not without merit. In 1898, mobs had burned the post offices and homes of two African American postmasters in South Carolina and Georgia. The mobs then murdered both postmasters, as well as the infant daughter of one of the postmasters.</p> <h2>The Indianola Affair</h2> <p>On December 4, 1902, Cox tendered her resignation that would take effect on January 1, 1903. President Roosevelt refused to accept it, later stating, “I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut upon any man, no-matter [sic] how worthy, purely on the grounds of race and color.” Roosevelt’s tender sentiments, however, held no power to stop a lynch mob and did little to limit white Democrats’ control in the state and region. Cox’s resignation was public knowledge, but her situation grew more perilous. Whites in Arkansas and other nearby Southern states threatened to come to Indianola and kill her. A fearful Cox refused to return to the post office, and it remained closed for much of December. The most serious threat to Cox occurred on January, 4, 1903, when she heard noises outside her home. That same evening, a federal postal inspector’s unexpected visit thwarted a would-be lynch mob plotting at the sheriff’s home. The next morning, Cox and her entire family left town.</p> <p>The Indianola Affair galvanized opinions on both sides. Throughout 1903, newspapers and magazines across the country reported on the post office closure. Some of the headlines in white papers were insulting and used racial epitaphs. The response of the African American press was varied. Some used the affair as a symbol of outrage that, alongside disenfranchisement statutes, signified efforts to block the political ambitions of African Americans throughout the country. Some praised Roosevelt’s actions and identified the roots of the post office closure in political jealousies and factionalism. Others, however, openly criticized how Roosevelt handled the incident. Some papers even expressed militant sentiments, calling for African Americans to take up arms. African Americans around the country saw Cox’s experience as an allegory of their own disenfranchisement and struggle for equality. As much as Cox’s race, education, and economic standing invited the ire of anxious whites experiencing a reversal in their own fortunes, these same characteristics made Cox particularly potent as a symbol of African American achievement.</p> <p>Cox spent most of her exile from Indianola in Birmingham, Alabama. There, the Coxes lived with a close family friend: John “Bob” Tarry, one of the richest African Americans in Birmingham. As Tarry’s live-in guests, the Coxes most likely circulated among the city’s African American business and social elite. Though the Coxes rejected Booker T. Washington and Isaiah Montgomery’s call to sideline political ambitions (Wayne remained active in the Republican Party), they embraced Washington’s call to develop business opportunities as a response to political disenfranchisement and social segregation. The Coxes returned to Indianola in February of 1904. Several months later, they opened the Delta Penny Savings Bank. Cox served as the bank’s vice president; after her husband’s death in 1916, she became secretary-treasurer, a position even more powerful than the bank’s president. The second African American-owned bank opened in Mississippi, Delta Penny became the largest and most successful African American-owned bank in the state until it closed in 1928. In 1908, the Coxes opened an insurance company, Mississippi Life Insurance Company, which became the first African American-owned insurance company in the United States to offer whole life insurance. Both the bank and the insurance company helped finance homes and other African American businesses throughout the state. It also helped thousands of families build modest wealth. Along with other enterprising Afro-Mississippians, the mission of business creation, economic development, and employment indicated that African Americans refused to operate at the margins of the Jim Crow economy and society in Mississippi. The Coxes’ strategy challenged the false boundaries between accommodation (accepting some discrimination to achieve economic success) and agitation (protesting for social and political equality).</p> <h2>The Indianola Affair in historical perspective</h2> <p>The Indianola Affair reminded well-to-do African Americans that material success did not guarantee physical security. It actually increased the likelihood that they would become targets of lynching and other forms of extralegal violence as well as continued harassment and exclusion. Cox’s fellow Mississippi native Ida B. Wells and the activist-scholar W. E. B. Du Bois were among some of the earliest voices to raise awareness about the links between African American economic achievement and extralegal violence.</p> <p>Thus, the struggle over the tiny post office in Indianola foreshadowed struggles for social justice, economic opportunity, and political power that resonate with present-day challenges that still call out for change. At the time, the Indianola Affair sparked the first major debate about race, states’ rights, and federal power in the United States Congress since Reconstruction. It also highlighted the complexities of African American political responses. The Coxes valued the formal ballot, but they embraced business and economic development as equally important responses to address institutional and structural inequities. In the present day, Americans continue to wrestle with racism and the erosion of democratic rights at every level of government, from the local to the federal. They also wrestle with economic justice, revealing radical activist sentiments in calls to address economic inequities, seen most vividly in boycotts, “buy black” campaigns, and collective efforts during the Civil Rights Movement and, most recently, in the #BankBlack movement.</p> <p><em>Shennette Garrett-Scott is assistant professor of history and African American studies at the University of Mississippi.</em></p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-sources-formatted--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-sources-formatted.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-sources-formatted.html.twig x field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-sources-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><h2>Sources and suggested readings:</h2> <p>Garrett-Scott, Shennette. “Cox, Minnie Geddings,” In <em>The Mississippi Encyclopedia</em>, edited by Ted Ownby, Charles Reagan Wilson, Ann J. Abadie, Odie Lindsey, and James G. Thomas. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi; Oxford: Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, 2017.</p> <p>Garrett-Scott, Shennette. “To Do a Work that Would Be Very Far Reaching: Minnie Geddings Cox, the Mississippi Life Insurance Company, and the Challenges of Black Women’s Business Leadership in the Early Twentieth-Century United States.” <em>Enterprise &amp; Society</em> 17, No. 3 (September 2016): 473–514.</p> <p>Historian of the U. S. Postal Service, “African-American Postal Workers in the 19th Century,” <a href="http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/african-american-workers-19thc.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/african-american-workers-19thc.pdf</a>.</p> <h2>Primary Sources</h2> <p>[“Mrs. Minnie M. Cox,”] Butte (Mont.) <em>New Age</em>, January 31, 1903. (See full page image at <a href="http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov</a>.)</p> <p>“President’s Plan to Reopen Post Office and Reinstate Negro Postmistress,” <em>St. Louis Republic</em>, January 11, 1903. (See full page image at <a href="http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov" rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov</a>.)</p> <p>U. S. Congress. Congressional Record. “Post-Office at Indianola, Miss., January 15, 1903,” <em>Congressional Record Index</em>, Vol. 36, No. 11 (January 5, 1903, to January 17, 1903), 57th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, D.C.: General Printing Office, 1903): 842–44.</p> <p>U. S. House of Representatives. House Reports, No. 422, <em>Resignation of the Postmaster at Indianola, Miss</em>., Serials 4531, 57th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, D.C.: General Printing Office, 1903–1906).</p> <p><em><strong>On the role of the Indianola Affair in regional and federal U.S. political history:</strong></em></p> <p>De Santis, Vincent P. “The Republican Party and the Southern Negro, 1877–1897.” <em>Journal of Negro History</em> 45, No. 2 (April 1960): 88–102.</p> <p>Gatewood, Willard B. “Theodore Roosevelt and the Indianola Affair.” <em>Journal of Negro History</em> 53, No. 1 (January 1968): 48–69.</p> <p>Mowry, George E. “The South and the Progressive Lily White Party of 1912.” <em>Journal of Southern History</em> 6, No. 2 (May 1940): 237–47.</p> <p>Scheiner, Seth M. “President Theodore Roosevelt and the Negro, 1901–1908.” <em>Journal of Negro History</em> 47, No. 3 (July 1962): 169–82.</p> <p><em><strong>On the racial, political, and economic climate of the Mississippi Delta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:</strong></em></p> <p>Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth: <em>The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity</em>. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.</p> <p>McMillen, Neil R. <em>Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow</em>. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1990.</p> <p>Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth. <em>American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta</em>. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.</p> <p><a href="/issue/mississippi-constitution-of-1890" rel="noopener" target="_blank">About the Mississippi Constitution of 1890</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/john-marshall-stone-thirty-first-and-thirty-third-governor-of-mississippi-1876-1882-1890-1896" rel="noopener" target="_blank">John Marshall Stone: Thirty-first and Thirty-third Governor of Mississippi: 1876-1882; 1890-1896</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/james-kimble-vardaman-thirty-sixth-governor-of-mississippi-1904-1908" rel="noopener" target="_blank">James Kimble Vardaman: Thirty-sixth Governor of Mississippi: 1904-1908</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/was-mississippi-a-part-of-progressivism" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Was Mississippi a Part of Progressivism?</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/ida-b-wells-a-courageous-voice-for-civil-rights" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Ida B. Wells: A Courageous Voice for Civil Rights</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/isaiah-t-montgomery-1847-1924-part-I" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Isaiah T. Montgomery: 1847-1924 (Part I)</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/isaiah-t-montgomery-1847-1924-part-ii" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Isaiah T. Montgomery: 1847-1924 (Part II)</a></p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-images--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-images.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-images.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-images field--type-image field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1102.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of Minnie and Wayne Cox’s home and parlor, circa 1911. The furnishings and piano in the Coxes’ private home conveyed the refinement and culture they sought to display to the outside world. Source: Beacon Lights of the Race, edited by G. P. Hamilton (E. H. Clark and Brother, 1911), 223.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of Minnie and Wayne Cox’s home and parlor, circa 1911&quot;}" role="button" title="Photograph of Minnie and Wayne Cox’s home and parlor, circa 1911. The furnishings and piano in the Coxes’ private home conveyed the refinement and culture they sought to display to the outside world. Source: Beacon Lights of the Race, edited by G. P. Hamilton (E. H. Clark and Brother, 1911), 223." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7164-8L9idgNCo9A" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of Minnie and Wayne Cox’s home and parlor, circa 1911. The furnishings and piano in the Coxes’ private home conveyed the refinement and culture they sought to display to the outside world. Source: Beacon Lights of the Race, edited by G. P. Hamilton (E. H. Clark and Brother, 1911), 223.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of Minnie and Wayne Cox’s home and parlor, circa 1911&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1102.jpg" width="415" height="600" alt="Photograph of Minnie and Wayne Cox’s home and parlor, circa 1911" title="Photograph of Minnie and Wayne Cox’s home and parlor, circa 1911. The furnishings and piano in the Coxes’ private home conveyed the refinement and culture they sought to display to the outside world. Source: Beacon Lights of the Race, edited by G. P. Hamilton (E. H. Clark and Brother, 1911), 223." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1103.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;A newspaper image purporting to show the undelivered mail in Indianola’s post office. President Theodore Roosevelt refused to appoint a new postmaster and reopen the post office. He actually diverted the mail to nearby Greenville and then Heathman. Source: “President’s Plan to Reopen Post Office and Reinstate Negro Postmistress,” St. Louis Republic, January 11, 1903, Part I, p. 1.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;A newspaper image purporting to show the undelivered mail in Indianola’s post office.&quot;}" role="button" title="A newspaper image purporting to show the undelivered mail in Indianola’s post office. President Theodore Roosevelt refused to appoint a new postmaster and reopen the post office. He actually diverted the mail to nearby Greenville and then Heathman. Source: “President’s Plan to Reopen Post Office and Reinstate Negro Postmistress,” St. Louis Republic, January 11, 1903, Part I, p. 1." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7164-8L9idgNCo9A" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;A newspaper image purporting to show the undelivered mail in Indianola’s post office. President Theodore Roosevelt refused to appoint a new postmaster and reopen the post office. He actually diverted the mail to nearby Greenville and then Heathman. Source: “President’s Plan to Reopen Post Office and Reinstate Negro Postmistress,” St. Louis Republic, January 11, 1903, Part I, p. 1.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;A newspaper image purporting to show the undelivered mail in Indianola’s post office.&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1103.jpg" width="602" height="525" alt="A newspaper image purporting to show the undelivered mail in Indianola’s post office." title="A newspaper image purporting to show the undelivered mail in Indianola’s post office. President Theodore Roosevelt refused to appoint a new postmaster and reopen the post office. He actually diverted the mail to nearby Greenville and then Heathman. Source: “President’s Plan to Reopen Post Office and Reinstate Negro Postmistress,” St. Louis Republic, January 11, 1903, Part I, p. 1." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1104.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;This magazine cover from Judge magazine (January 31, 1903) features an image of a male postmaster, but the cartoon alludes to Cox and the Indianola Affair. It reflects the racial, sexual, and economic anxiety surrounding issues of racial equality, federal power, and states’ rights in the Deep South that the Indianola Affair injected into the national discourse for the first time since Reconstruction. Source: https://www.georgetownbookshop.com/display2.asp?id=940.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;This magazine cover from Judge magazine (January 31, 1903) features an image of a male postmaster, but the cartoon alludes to Cox and the Indianola Affair.&quot;}" role="button" title="This magazine cover from Judge magazine (January 31, 1903) features an image of a male postmaster, but the cartoon alludes to Cox and the Indianola Affair. It reflects the racial, sexual, and economic anxiety surrounding issues of racial equality, federal power, and states’ rights in the Deep South that the Indianola Affair injected into the national discourse for the first time since Reconstruction. Source: https://www.georgetownbookshop.com/display2.asp?id=940." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7164-8L9idgNCo9A" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;This magazine cover from Judge magazine (January 31, 1903) features an image of a male postmaster, but the cartoon alludes to Cox and the Indianola Affair. It reflects the racial, sexual, and economic anxiety surrounding issues of racial equality, federal power, and states’ rights in the Deep South that the Indianola Affair injected into the national discourse for the first time since Reconstruction. Source: https://www.georgetownbookshop.com/display2.asp?id=940.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;This magazine cover from Judge magazine (January 31, 1903) features an image of a male postmaster, but the cartoon alludes to Cox and the Indianola Affair.&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1104.jpg" width="431" height="601" alt="This magazine cover from Judge magazine (January 31, 1903) features an image of a male postmaster, but the cartoon alludes to Cox and the Indianola Affair." title="This magazine cover from Judge magazine (January 31, 1903) features an image of a male postmaster, but the cartoon alludes to Cox and the Indianola Affair. It reflects the racial, sexual, and economic anxiety surrounding issues of racial equality, federal power, and states’ rights in the Deep South that the Indianola Affair injected into the national discourse for the first time since Reconstruction. Source: https://www.georgetownbookshop.com/display2.asp?id=940." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1105.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;This newspaper image of Minnie Cox appeared in African American newspapers, including the Colored American. The image communicates the wealth and affluence that made Cox a target of violence and repression for local whites but also a symbol of achievement and progress for African Americans around the nation. Source: [“Mrs. Minnie M. Cox,”] Butte (Mont.) New Age, January 31, 1903, p. 4.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;The image communicates the wealth and affluence that made Cox a target of violence and repression for local whites but also a symbol of achievement and progress for African Americans around the nation.&quot;}" role="button" title="This newspaper image of Minnie Cox appeared in African American newspapers, including the Colored American. The image communicates the wealth and affluence that made Cox a target of violence and repression for local whites but also a symbol of achievement and progress for African Americans around the nation. Source: [“Mrs. Minnie M. Cox,”] Butte (Mont.) New Age, January 31, 1903, p. 4." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7164-8L9idgNCo9A" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;This newspaper image of Minnie Cox appeared in African American newspapers, including the Colored American. The image communicates the wealth and affluence that made Cox a target of violence and repression for local whites but also a symbol of achievement and progress for African Americans around the nation. Source: [“Mrs. Minnie M. Cox,”] Butte (Mont.) New Age, January 31, 1903, p. 4.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;The image communicates the wealth and affluence that made Cox a target of violence and repression for local whites but also a symbol of achievement and progress for African Americans around the nation.&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1105.jpg" width="278" height="404" alt="The image communicates the wealth and affluence that made Cox a target of violence and repression for local whites but also a symbol of achievement and progress for African Americans around the nation." title="This newspaper image of Minnie Cox appeared in African American newspapers, including the Colored American. The image communicates the wealth and affluence that made Cox a target of violence and repression for local whites but also a symbol of achievement and progress for African Americans around the nation. Source: [“Mrs. Minnie M. Cox,”] Butte (Mont.) New Age, January 31, 1903, p. 4." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-lesson-plan--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-lesson-plan field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/lesson-plan/minnie-geddings-cox-and-the-indianola-affair-lesson-plan" hreflang="en">Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair, 1902-1904 Lesson Plan</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Mon, 16 Apr 2018 17:58:00 +0000 usnext 7164 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov The Great Depression and Religion in Mississippi Lesson Plan http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/lesson-plan/the-great-depression-and-religion-in-mississippi-lesson-plan <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The Great Depression and Religion in Mississippi Lesson Plan</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Thu, 04/06/2017 - 13:02</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><h3>Overview</h3> <p>The widespread suffering caused by the Great Depression rendered religious agencies in Mississippi unable to help those in need. As the income of workers fell by 40 to 60 percent, donations traditionally used to fund religious aid for those trapped at the bottom of society also plummeted. Most religious leaders and agencies in Mississippi called for and subsequently welcomed the various social aid programs created by President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. As the New Deal took effect, however, state religious leaders held mixed emotions and opinions concerning the program’s success in the state. Most white clergy continued to support the relief and recovery programs of the New Deal, although many worried that federal aid would undermine Jim Crow segregation. Black ministers in Mississippi responded more cautiously to the New Deal as many program benefits were denied to Black southerners, particularly domestic workers, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers. A minority of White ministers feared that the implementation of the New Deal meant that local churches had permanently given up their social and moral authority to an expanded federal government, a fear that would continue to grow among white southern ministers in the coming decades.</p> <h3>Curricular Connections</h3> <h4><em>US History: 1877 to Present</em></h4> <ul><li>US.6.3 - Analyze President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as a response to the economic crisis of the Great Depression, including: the effectiveness of New Deal programs in relieving suffering, achieving economic recovery, and promoting organized labor.</li> <li>US.6.4 - Evaluate the impact of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the presidency and the New Deal’s impact on the expansion of federal power.</li> </ul><h3>Teaching Level</h3> <p>Grades 7 through 12</p> <h3>Materials/Equipment</h3> <ul><li>Mississippi History Now article, “The Great Depression and Religion in Mississippi”</li> <li><a href="/sites/default/files/2021-09/The%20Great%20Depression_A%20Character%20Study.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Character Analysis Worksheet</a></li> <li>Classroom board</li> <li>Computer</li> <li>Index cards or unlined paper cut into squares</li> <li>Internet access</li> <li>Resource books</li> <li>PowerPoint</li> <li>Data Projector</li> </ul><h3>Objectives</h3> <p>The students will:</p> <ol><li>Determine the role religious agencies played in assisting people in need in Mississippi both prior to and after the Great Depression.</li> <li>Examine the widespread suffering caused by the Great Depression from the viewpoint of different population groups in Mississippi.</li> <li>Evaluate how New Deal programs impacted different population groups in Mississippi.</li> </ol><h3>Opening the Lesson</h3> <p>Prior to the start of class, the teacher will list the following questions on the board:</p> <ol><li>What would families do to survive and attempt to recover?</li> <li>If that fails, where would they go for help?</li> <li>When that help runs out, where would they go next?</li> <li>And next?</li> </ol><p>To open the lesson, the teacher will ask students to consider the following scenario of a family living in Mississippi in 1931 during the Great Depression. Next, the teacher will read the scenario listed below to the class. </p> <p><em>It is 1931. Your house burns down. A month later, you contract malaria, and you cannot work. Your family’s life savings has been lost in a bank failure. Your family has almost nothing left to eat.</em></p> <p>Next, the teacher will ask students the questions listed on the board prior to the start of class. The teacher will record the student responses on the board. After the class discussion, the teacher will tell the students that they will have an opportunity to study how different populations in the 1930s were affected by the Great Depression and the New Deal.</p> <h3>Developing the Lesson</h3> <ol><li>Each of the characters listed below will be placed on separate index cards or pieces of paper that are card size. The set of cards will be duplicated based on the number of student groups to ensure that each student group receives a card. The students should be aware that these are real scenarios from Mississippi in the 1930s. <ul><li>A Black male sharecropper living and working on a plantation in Coahoma County with a wife and five children.</li> <li>A Syrian woman living in Greenwood. Her husband is dead, and she is raising her high school-aged son on her own.</li> <li>A Black small business owner in Mound Bayou, whose customers are predominately local Black farmers. You, your wife, and your two children live in a small house beside your store.</li> <li>A White male wage laborer in Bolivar County. You have a wife and four children who travel with you looking for work in the cotton fields.</li> <li>A White female minister in Natchez, who is a wife and the mother of two children. She and her husband preach at a local holiness church and scratch out a living on their small farm.</li> </ul></li> <li>Next, students will be placed in groups of three or four. One member from each group will select one of the character cards mentioned above. Depending on the number of student groups, more than one group may have the same character.</li> <li>The teacher will instruct the student groups to research their assigned character. Students will use various books and Internet sources to complete their character analysis. Along with the current article, “The Great Depression and Religion in Mississippi,” students will also use other articles from the Mississippi History Now website for their research. Other articles suggested for student research are listed at the bottom of this webpage.</li> <li>Some of the research questions for the character analysis should include the following: <ul><li>What types of survival strategies or resources were available to your character prior to the Great Depression? Were these same strategies available during the depression? If no, why were they not available?</li> <li>What types of survival strategies or resources were available or may have been used by your character in the early years of the Great Depression?</li> <li>Which New Deal programs might have been available to your character? Would those benefits have been limited in any way depending on your character’s race or occupation?<br /> Attached to the lesson plan is a worksheet that students can use to record their research notes.</li> </ul></li> <li>The teacher will tell the students that they will be required to create a PowerPoint on their character analysis research that will be shared with the class. The students should include a slide in the PowerPoint that list the resources used for the assignment. A slide on the geography of the area where their character resided should also be included in the PowerPoint.</li> </ol><h3>Closing the Lesson</h3> <p>The students will present their research projects to the class.</p> <h3>Assessing Student Learning</h3> <ul><li>Class participation</li> <li>Group activity</li> <li>Research notes</li> <li>Presentations</li> </ul><h3>Enrichment</h3> <ul><li>Students can research local, state, and national leaders during the Depression.</li> <li>Students can conduct further research on the programs included in the New Deal.</li> <li>Students can research local, state, and national resources available to those in need today.</li> <li>The teacher can use Mississippi History Now articles mentioned in this lesson plan to create a unit on the Great Depression.</li> </ul><h3>Other related Mississippi History Now articles</h3> <ul><li><a href="/issue/depression-and-hard-times-in-mississippi-letters-from-the-william-m-colmer-papers" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Depression and Hard Times in Mississippi: Letters from the William M. Colmer Papers</a> (Letters from the William M. Colmer Papers can be directly accessed <a href="/issue/depression-and-hard-times-in-mississippi-letters" rel="noopener" target="_blank">here.</a> )</li> <li><a href="/issue/farmers-without-land-the-plight-of-white-tenant-farmers-and-sharecroppers" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/religion-in-mississippi" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Religion in Mississippi</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/womens-work-relief-in-the-great-depression" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Women’s Work Relief in the Great Depression</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/cooperative-farming-in-mississippi" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Cooperative Farming in Mississippi</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/economic-development-in-the-1930s-balance-agriculture-with-industry" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Economic Development in the 1930s: Balance Agriculture with Industry</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/the-rural-electrification-of-northeast-mississippi" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Rural Electrification of Northeast Mississippi</a></li> <li><a href="/issue/wpa-slave-narratives" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><span class="caps">WPA</span> Slave Narratives</a></li> </ul><p><em>Karla Smith is the Social Studies Department Chair at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College’s Jefferson Davis Campus.</em></p> <h3><span class="caps">ADDITIONAL</span> <span class="caps">MISSISSIPPI</span> <span class="caps">HISTORY RESOURCES</span>:</h3> <p><a href="https://www.mdah.ms.gov/teachers-students" rel="noopener" target="_blank">https://www.mdah.ms.gov/teachers-students</a></p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-lp-author--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-lp-author.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-lp-author.html.twig * field--string.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-lp-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Karla Smith</div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-issue--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-issue.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-issue.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-issue field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/issue/the-great-depression-and-religion-in-mississippi" hreflang="en">The Great Depression and Religion in Mississippi</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-media-lesson-plan--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-media-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-media-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-media-lesson-plan field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Media</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'media' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * media--source-file.html.twig * media--document--default.html.twig * media--document.html.twig * media--default.html.twig x media.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/media.html.twig' --> <article class="media media--type-document media--view-mode-default"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--media--field-media-document--document.html.twig * field--media--field-media-document.html.twig * field--media--document.html.twig * field--field-media-document.html.twig * field--file.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-media-document field--type-file field--label-visually_hidden"> <div class="field__label visually-hidden">Document</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/sites/default/files/2021-09/The%20Great%20Depression_A%20Character%20Study.pdf" class="file-download file-download-application file-download-pdf" target="_blank">The Great Depression_A Character Study.pdf</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> </article> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/media.html.twig' --> </div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme-lp--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-theme-lp.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-theme-lp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme-lp field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Theme</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/27" hreflang="en">Religion</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period-lp--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period-lp.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-time-period-lp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period-lp field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Time Period</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7" hreflang="en">Bridging Hardship, 1928-1945</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Thu, 06 Apr 2017 18:02:58 +0000 usnext 7157 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov Blewett Lee: Mississippi’s Forgotten Legal Pioneer http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/blewett-lee-mississippi-s-forgotten-legal-pioneer <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--issue.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Blewett Lee: Mississippi’s Forgotten Legal Pioneer</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--issue.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--issue.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Mon, 08/15/2016 - 09:40</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-publication-date.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-publication-date.html.twig * field--datetime.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig' --> August 2016 <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> by Whit Waide and James C. Giesen <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-theme.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-theme.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/17" hreflang="en">Education</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/21" hreflang="en">Industry and Agriculture</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-time-period.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5" hreflang="en">The World Remade, 1866–1902</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6" hreflang="en">Promise and Peril, 1903–1927</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7" hreflang="en">Bridging Hardship, 1928-1945</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/8" hreflang="en">Forging Ahead, 1946–Present</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--issue.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>In 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration (<span class="caps">FAA</span>) designated Mississippi State University (<span class="caps">MSU</span>) as host of the National Center of Excellence for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. The “unmanned aircraft” at the center of this study are more commonly referred to as “drones.” As a part of its charge, the <span class="caps">FAA</span> not only tasked <span class="caps">MSU</span> with pioneering mechanical advances in drone technology, but it also instructed the university to review existing laws, policies, and regulations associated with the new aerial machines and to recommend needed changes. The <span class="caps">FAA</span> announced that it had selected <span class="caps">MSU</span> for several reasons, including the university’s expertise in a variety of engineering fields, its proximity to corporations conducting similar research, and MSU’s longstanding relationship with both the <span class="caps">FAA</span> and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (<span class="caps">NASA</span>). The choice of <span class="caps">MSU</span>, however, was fitting for another reason that was not cited in the FAA’s initial press release announcing its selection. MSU’s connection with legal aviation began a century ago through one of the university’s first graduates, Blewett Harrison Lee.</p> <h2>Blewett’s Early Life</h2> <p>Blewett Lee was a remarkably creative attorney whose breadth of interests and force of opinion led to his being one of the most important legal authorities in Mississippi history. Although his rightful place in the annals of aviation law has been largely overlooked, Lee played an integral part in the development of some of the original laws pertaining to the operation of early “flying machines.” In many ways, Blewett’s career and influence in the field of aviation law mirrors the tandem advance of both law and technology across the nation during the twentieth century.</p> <p>Blewett was born on March 1, 1867, in Columbus, Mississippi, to Regina Harrison Lee, the daughter of a prominent Mississippi family, and her husband, former Confederate Lieutenant General Stephen Dill Lee. When Blewett was born, Regina Lee’s father wrote the following about his newborn grandson: “Poor little thing, it little knew what a world it was coming into, or the prospects in the future. . . .” At the time of Blewett’s birth, many citizens of Columbus, like the rest of the South, continued to suffer mightily in the wake of the American Civil War, but Blewett’s birth helped General Lee to “enjoy peace of mind” during this desperate time. He also began renovating his wife’s family plantation in Columbus after the war. The family’s future, however, began to truly change in 1879 when Governor John M. Stone appointed General Lee to be the first president of Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College (Mississippi A&amp;M, now <span class="caps">MSU</span>). In 1880, General Lee took over a small, flailing menagerie of students, faculty, and structures, but by the time of his retirement in 1899, he had helped build the fledgling institution into a regional leader in research and education. During General Lee’s tenure as president, the university also became the intellectual setting within which his son, Blewett, developed the foundation of his future career path.</p> <h2>Blewett’s Educational and Professional Path</h2> <p>By the time Blewett enrolled in the early 1880s, the university under his father’s leadership had adopted a new focus on agricultural training and applied sciences, which meant that Blewett and his classmates underwent a relatively rigorous course of practical training (i.e. laboring on the school’s farms), as well as a full load of traditional classroom education, including chemical physics, entomology, rhetoric, and history. The university’s focus on applied sciences had a profound effect upon Blewett’s continued education and his future legal career. After receiving a second degree from the University of Virginia, the South’s leading academic institution at the time, Blewett earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1888 at the age of twenty-one. While at Harvard, he impressed members of the faculty as well as fellow classmates. Samuel Williston, a classmate of Blewett and later dean of Harvard Law School, said the following about him: “His brilliant mind, geniality, simplicity, and an outlook somewhat colored by his Southern training made him an attractive companion.” Following Harvard, Blewett studied at universities in Freiburg and Leipriz, Germany.</p> <p>In 1889, Blewett began the most important and transformative phase of his professional life when he served as a legal assistant—what we now call a “clerk”—for United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Horace Gray. This appointment was a great accomplishment for the young lawyer who at the time was very much an outsider in Washington. He was the only clerk not to have attended an elite preparatory school, the only one not a graduate of Harvard College, and the only law clerk from south of the Mason-Dixon Line. In 1893, Blewett moved to Chicago where he taught law at both Northwestern University and the University of Chicago and also served as chief legal counsel for the Illinois Central Railroad, one of the most powerful corporations in the nation at the time. In 1898, thirty-year-old Blewett married Frances Glessner, a wealthy Chicago socialite. Early in their marriage, the couple moved to Atlanta where Blewett began a private law practice. The couple had three children but eventually divorced in 1914. (Interestingly, Frances went on to pursue her own notable career as an early pioneer of forensic science, known mainly for her precise dioramas depicting crime scenes.) Despite his prominence as an attorney within the railroad industry, Blewett’s greatest accomplishments were achieved within the field of an entirely different and brand new form of transportation: aviation.</p> <h2>Blewett’s Influence Upon Early Aviation Law</h2> <p>Blewett approached the law from two seemingly contradictory perspectives: a global view, on the one hand, and a very narrow, detailed view on the other. Much of this approach to the law can be attributed to his undergraduate education at Mississippi A&amp;M and its emphasis on applied sciences. Blewett once told an audience at Harvard Law School that “the law is a science, therefore its conclusions have universal validity.” Both lawyers and judges, he argued, should approach legal issues methodically and empirically in the same manner as a chemist would approach a laboratory experiment. He also believed that in order to understand aviation law one must first understand the science of flight.</p> <p>Although aerial transportation was in its infancy as Blewett began his legal career, he saw the potential that air travel offered. He was one of the first lawyers to recognize that the legal issues surrounding rail travel had the potential to hinder the advance of aviation. He understood that the laws governing machines moving on steel rails could not simply be applied to machines moving through the sky. In early 1913, a mere ten years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, Blewett published his legal musings on the ramifications of aircraft technology in the <em>American Journal of International Law</em>. In his article, “Sovereignty of the Air,” Blewett pointed to existing European aviation laws and called upon the American legal system to prepare for the new realities of air travel. At the time, Massachusetts and Connecticut were the only states that had enacted any aviation laws. Referencing a Connecticut law that required all pilots to hold an operator’s license, Blewett wrote: “When aeroplanes become as plentiful as blackberries, Connecticut will be found prepared.” Massachusetts aviation law went a step further than that of Connecticut by imposing altitude requirements for any aircraft flying over municipalities or “crowds of people” and by holding aviators responsible for any damages caused by their flights.</p> <p>Blewett worked to extend aviation laws in the United States. His policy initiatives helped to determine who would be allowed to pilot early flying machines, where these machines would be allowed to fly, and what activities or maneuvers these aircraft could perform while airborne. Blewett’s ideas and methodology concerning aerial laws, published nearly a century earlier, remain influential today. In a 2012 article referencing the legal issues posed by the popularity of drones, Dr. Timothy T. Takahashi of Arizona State University cited Blewett’s work as a viable model for current drone regulations. According to Takahashi, the relevance of Blewett’s work (ironically now the work of <span class="caps">MSU</span> itself by virtue of the FAA’s appointment), is in marked contrast to the failure of existing federal aviation law to “provide a durable framework to welcome the ‘arrival of the drones’.”</p> <h2>Blewett’s Effect on Spiritualism</h2> <p>Blewett’s legal interest and sphere of influence did not lie solely within the field of transportation. Essentially, he was also a pioneer in a much stranger corner of the legal world, spiritualism, the belief that departed spirits interact with mortals. Through a series of articles with such suggestive titles as “Spiritualism and Crime,” “Psychic Phenomenon and the Law,” and “The Conjurer,” Blewett became the leading American legal thinker on spirits. Just as Sir Isaac Newton’s mastery of science led him to a fascination with the “mystical pursuit” of alchemy, Blewett’s expanding legal career similarly directed him toward “mystical pursuits” within the realm of jurisprudence.</p> <p>Blewett’s foray into such “mystical pursuits” in the legal system is perhaps even more pioneering than his observations about the laws of aviation. In a 1923 article published in the <em>Virginia Law Review</em> under the title, “The Fortune Teller,” Blewett compared the lawyer’s role to that of a soothsayer. “All of us,” he argued, “predict the future more or less . . . [and] such predictions as these are based on science or experience; they rest on the laws or uniformities of nature, including human nature, and are successful in so far as these laws are known and intelligently applied.” From Blewett’s standpoint, the more one understands the laws of nature, the better one can predict the future. “The main difficulty about psychic phenomena,” Blewett once argued, “is not with the law, but with the facts, and what is worse, the explanation of them. The law we have already.” Ultimately, he suggested that the field of law, and perhaps the field of medicine as well, needed to consider the mind itself more deeply and that there might be more science than religion behind the work of mediums. Furthermore, Blewett believed that mediums, soothsayers, and spiritualists should be afforded deeper understanding by the legal system, rather than being routinely and summarily judged as witches or shams. From his childhood in post-Civil War Columbus to his early education at Mississippi A&amp;M, Blewett stood out as a bright, engaged person whose mind perhaps worked a bit differently than most others. Due to his unconventional legal interests and the fact that his perception of the world was slightly askew from that of his peers, Blewett, who managed to help shape the legal landscape of the twentieth century, has been relegated to the shadows of his father’s wartime service and popularity. Even in death, Blewett remained in his father’s shadow. He died in Georgia in 1951 at the age of eighty-four but was buried in Friendship Cemetery in Columbus along with his father and mother. However, Blewett Harrison Lee rightly deserves to be remembered in his own right for his innovative legal thinking, his seminal contributions to the revolutionary field of aviation law as well as spiritualism, and as having possessed one of the greatest legal minds in Mississippi history.</p> <p><em>Whit Waide is a clinical assistant professor of political science, university pre-law advisor, and general counsel to students at Mississippi State University.</em></p> <p><em>James C. Giesen is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. He also serves as executive secretary of the Agricultural History Society and series editor of the</em> Environmental History and the American South Series <em>published by the University of Georgia Press.</em></p> <h2>Other Mississippi History <span class="caps">NOW</span> articles featuring lesser-known, but influential Mississippians:</h2> <p><a href="/issue/sarah-anne-ellis-dorsey-a-woman-of-uncommon-mind" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey: A Woman of Uncommon Mind</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/isaiah-t-montgomery-1847-1924-part-I" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Isaiah T. Montgomery, 1847-1924 (Part I)</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/isaiah-t-montgomery-1847-1924-part-ii" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Isaiah T. Montgomery, 1847-1924 (Part II)</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/fox-conner-a-general-s-general" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Fox Conner: A General’s General</a></p> <p><a href="/issue/lucy-somerville-howorth-lawyer-politician-and-feminist" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Lucy Somerville Howorth: Lawyer, Politician, and Feminist</a></p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-sources-formatted--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-sources-formatted.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-sources-formatted.html.twig x field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-sources-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><h3>Sources and suggested readings:</h3> <p>Ballard, Michael B. <em>Maroon and White: Mississippi State University, 1878-2003.</em> Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008.</p> <p>Hattaway, Herman. <em>General Stephen D. Lee.</em> Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1976.</p> <p>Lee, Blewett. “The Conjurer.” <em>Virginia Law Review 7, no. 5</em> (February 1921): 370-377.</p> <p>_________. “The Fortune Teller.” <em>Virginia Law Review 9, no. 4</em> (February 1923): 249.</p> <p>_________. “Psychic Phenomena and the Law.” <em>Harvard Law Review 34, no. 6</em> (April 1921): 625-638.</p> <p>_________. “Sovereignty of Air.” <em>The American Journal of International Law, 7, no. 3</em> (July 1913): 470-496.</p> <p>_________. “Spiritualism and Crime.” <em>Columbia Law Review 22, no. 5</em> (May 1922): 439-449.</p> <p>Lee, Percy Maxim and John Glessner Lee. <em>Family Reunion: An Incomplete Account of the Maxim-Lee Family History</em>. Privately printed, 1971. Special Collections, Mitchell Library, Mississippi State University.</p> <p>Papers of Stephen D. Lee, University Archives, Mississippi State University.</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-images--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-images.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-images.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-images field--type-image field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1052.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of Blewett Lee circa 1905. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of Blewett Lee circa 1905&quot;}" role="button" title="Photograph of Blewett Lee circa 1905. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6788-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of Blewett Lee circa 1905. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of Blewett Lee circa 1905&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1052.jpg" width="428" height="768" alt="Photograph of Blewett Lee circa 1905" title="Photograph of Blewett Lee circa 1905. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1053.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of General Stephen D. Lee, Blewett Lee, and Blewett’s daughter, Frances Lee, taken in Chicago in 1905. Blewett’s son, John Glessner Lee, is partially seen in the left of the photograph. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of General Stephen D. Lee, Blewett Lee, and Blewett’s daughter, Frances Lee, taken in Chicago in 1905. Blewett’s son, John Glessner Lee, is partially seen in the left of the photograph.&quot;}" role="button" title="Photograph of General Stephen D. Lee, Blewett Lee, and Blewett’s daughter, Frances Lee, taken in Chicago in 1905. Blewett’s son, John Glessner Lee, is partially seen in the left of the photograph. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6788-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of General Stephen D. Lee, Blewett Lee, and Blewett’s daughter, Frances Lee, taken in Chicago in 1905. Blewett’s son, John Glessner Lee, is partially seen in the left of the photograph. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of General Stephen D. Lee, Blewett Lee, and Blewett’s daughter, Frances Lee, taken in Chicago in 1905. Blewett’s son, John Glessner Lee, is partially seen in the left of the photograph.&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1053.jpg" width="488" height="768" alt="Photograph of General Stephen D. Lee, Blewett Lee, and Blewett’s daughter, Frances Lee, taken in Chicago in 1905. Blewett’s son, John Glessner Lee, is partially seen in the left of the photograph." title="Photograph of General Stephen D. Lee, Blewett Lee, and Blewett’s daughter, Frances Lee, taken in Chicago in 1905. Blewett’s son, John Glessner Lee, is partially seen in the left of the photograph. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1054.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Studio photograph of Blewett Lee taken later in his life. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Studio photograph of Blewett Lee taken later in his life.&quot;}" role="button" title="Studio photograph of Blewett Lee taken later in his life. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6788-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Studio photograph of Blewett Lee taken later in his life. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Studio photograph of Blewett Lee taken later in his life.&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1054.jpg" width="578" height="768" alt="Studio photograph of Blewett Lee taken later in his life." title="Studio photograph of Blewett Lee taken later in his life. Courtesy of the Stephen D. Lee Home and Museum, Columbus, Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1055.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of the James T. Harrison Home in Columbus, Mississippi. The home was built circa 1840 by Thomas Blewett for daughter Regina and James Harrison. It was the site of the 1865 marriage of Stephen D. Lee and Regina Harrison Lee and the childhood home of Blewett Lee. Courtesy of Carolyn Burns Kaye of Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of the James T. Harrison Home in Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;}" role="button" title="Photograph of the James T. Harrison Home in Columbus, Mississippi. The home was built circa 1840 by Thomas Blewett for daughter Regina and James Harrison. It was the site of the 1865 marriage of Stephen D. Lee and Regina Harrison Lee and the childhood home of Blewett Lee. Courtesy of Carolyn Burns Kaye of Columbus, Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6788-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of the James T. Harrison Home in Columbus, Mississippi. The home was built circa 1840 by Thomas Blewett for daughter Regina and James Harrison. It was the site of the 1865 marriage of Stephen D. Lee and Regina Harrison Lee and the childhood home of Blewett Lee. Courtesy of Carolyn Burns Kaye of Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of the James T. Harrison Home in Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1055.jpg" width="1024" height="591" alt="Photograph of the James T. Harrison Home in Columbus, Mississippi." title="Photograph of the James T. Harrison Home in Columbus, Mississippi. The home was built circa 1840 by Thomas Blewett for daughter Regina and James Harrison. It was the site of the 1865 marriage of Stephen D. Lee and Regina Harrison Lee and the childhood home of Blewett Lee. Courtesy of Carolyn Burns Kaye of Columbus, Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1056.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of the Hickory Sticks property in Columbus, Mississippi. Purchased by Stephen D. Lee in 1879 and most likely the teenage home of Blewett Lee. Courtesy of the Local History Department at the Columbus Public Library, Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of the Hickory Sticks property in Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;}" role="button" title="Photograph of the Hickory Sticks property in Columbus, Mississippi. Purchased by Stephen D. Lee in 1879 and most likely the teenage home of Blewett Lee. Courtesy of the Local History Department at the Columbus Public Library, Columbus, Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6788-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Photograph of the Hickory Sticks property in Columbus, Mississippi. Purchased by Stephen D. Lee in 1879 and most likely the teenage home of Blewett Lee. Courtesy of the Local History Department at the Columbus Public Library, Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Photograph of the Hickory Sticks property in Columbus, Mississippi.&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1056.jpg" width="426" height="640" alt="Photograph of the Hickory Sticks property in Columbus, Mississippi." title="Photograph of the Hickory Sticks property in Columbus, Mississippi. Purchased by Stephen D. Lee in 1879 and most likely the teenage home of Blewett Lee. Courtesy of the Local History Department at the Columbus Public Library, Columbus, Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Mon, 15 Aug 2016 14:40:10 +0000 usnext 6788 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov The Truth About the Boll Weevil http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/the-truth-about-the-boll-weevil <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--issue.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The Truth About the Boll Weevil</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--issue.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--issue.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Tue, 03/03/2015 - 15:03</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-publication-date.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-publication-date.html.twig * field--datetime.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig' --> March 2015 <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> by James C. Giesen <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-theme.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-theme.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/9" hreflang="en">African American</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/21" hreflang="en">Industry and Agriculture</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-time-period.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6" hreflang="en">Promise and Peril, 1903–1927</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--issue.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><em>During the early 1900s, the boll weevil threatened the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta and put the state’s cotton kingdom in peril. Surprisingly, planters believed that the best way to defend their cotton from the weevil was to protect their place on top of the racial and social ladder in the Delta. James Giesen’s research reveals the ways in which the beliefs of White landowners concerning race and labor shaped the approach of Delta planters to their agricultural environment and its pests. Giesen is the author of “’The Truth About the Boll Weevil’: The Nature of Planter Power in the Mississippi Delta,” Environmental History 14, no. 4 (October 2009): 683-704, from which this article has been condensed.</em> – Editor’s note</p> <h2>A profound threat to the Delta “promised land”</h2> <p>In late 1908, Mississippi Delta planter LeRoy Percy wrote a friend about the approaching cotton boll weevil. Sixteen years earlier, the insect pest had appeared in Texas and begun a slow march toward Percy’s fields. As the weevil drew near, Percy worried that his family’s Delta cotton kingdom teetered on the brink of destruction. “Without question,” Percy wrote, “the weevil will bring with him disaster.”</p> <p>There was legitimate cause for Percy’s dismay. The pea-sized beetle, which was present in the cotton fields of five states, could already be blamed for staggering losses: four million bales of cotton valued at roughly $238 million in 1908 (approximately $6 billion in 2015 currency values). Farmers and government scientists had discovered what made this pest so damaging. The boll weevil was dependent on cotton at every stage of its life. The insects fed on the plant’s fibers, laid eggs in its squares, grew in its enclosed buds, and hibernated on the edges of its fields. Of the weevil’s four life stages (egg, larva, pupa, and adult), it lived three inside the plant itself. Poisons were ineffective because the pest spent most of its life nestled inside the square of the cotton plant where it was safe from insecticides that were applied only to the outside of the crop. Moreover, the top weevil expert at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (<span class="caps">USDA</span>) wrote in 1907 that the alluvial areas of the Mississippi Delta might prove to be the weevil’s “promised land.”</p> <h2>Transformation of land and labor in the Delta</h2> <p>There was no region of the country, perhaps the world, more devoted to mass production of cotton than the Mississippi Delta. By the dawn of the twentieth century, Mississippi landowners had transformed the Delta from an uninhabitable swamp into a modern, agricultural environment characterized by generous farmland, few landowners, and an abundance of African American labor. Cotton divided Delta society between those who owned land and those who merely worked it (e.g., sharecroppers and other tenant farmers). Nearly all of those who owned the land were White, while the vast majority of those who worked the land were Black.</p> <p>It was clear to Percy and the rest of the planter elite that the approaching boll weevil was a profound threat not merely to their cotton plantations, but more importantly, to the social and economic system of the Delta that rested on the plant’s growth. The boll weevil was a danger both to planter power and to the very fabric of the human relationships that planters believed they controlled. The insect might as well have been a devourer of paper money or tenant contracts as of the cotton plant itself.</p> <h2>“Controlling the fight”: Delta society and labor</h2> <p>Examining the history of the boll weevil’s arrival in the Mississippi Delta sheds light on the complicated relationship between the agricultural environment, society, and economic power in the early twentieth century South. Dealing with farm laborers had always been more important to the planter’s fight against the natural world than their understanding of forests, soil, finance, or even the cotton plant itself. Under threat by the advancing insect pest, these landowners thought first of retaining control of the farm workforce. For planters, beating the boll weevil didn’t mean killing it. It did not even mean keeping their cotton safe from the pest’s harm. Instead, winning this latest war against nature meant controlling <em>the fight</em> against the boll weevil.</p> <p>Managing the region’s defense against the pest on their terms meant that planters could afford to let the weevil destroy literally tons of cotton. These planters could economically withstand a few years of crop losses, but what they could not survive was a revolution by their largely African American workforce and the dismantlement of their traditional plantation structure. Elite planters calculated that the unique natural assets of the Delta—its soil, climate, topography, and geography—would eventually resist the weevil, but if the vast labor force left the area, the plantation kingdom could never recover. Planters were right. The weevil’s devastation of cotton was short-lived, tenants stayed, and the dreaded revolution in the Delta agricultural environment did not materialize.</p> <p>The preparation of large landowners for the arrival of the boll weevil offers a window into the process by which landowners’ environmental beliefs shaped the treatment of farm labor during a specific, but dynamic, historical moment. The region’s landowners defined this insect enemy as a human dilemma and favored solutions to the boll weevil problem that fit into their understanding of labor and the uniqueness of the Delta environment. These planters believed that if knowledge about the pest was made public, it would “panic” sharecroppers and other tenant workers, and thousands of African American laborers, upon whom a successful, profitable crop relied, would leave the Delta.</p> <h2>“Dire consequences”: planters’ attempts to control labor</h2> <p>Central to the South’s difference from the rest of the country in the early twentieth century were the roles played by farm laborers and race. This boll weevil story offers a glimpse into how powerful landowners thought about the connections between the vast plantations they owned and the people living and working there, who were mostly formerly enslaved people or their children.</p> <p>For many Delta planters like <a href="/issue/alfred-holt-stone-1870-1955-his-unique-collection-of-reading-material-about-people-of-african-descent" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Alfred Holt Stone</a> of Washington County, the Black labor force and the physical environment of the Delta were equally important to its future as a cotton kingdom. He knew them to be inextricably linked, almost one and the same. He rarely spoke of African Americans without mentioning nature, and vice versa. In a 1902 paper published by the American Economic Association, Stone explained how the natural gifts of the Delta’s physical world owed its environmental transformation to the work of Black Mississippians. “Its forests have been cut out by the negro,” and the levees “erected mainly by the negro.” While “[t]he capital, the devising brain, the directing will, constitute the white man’s part,” Stone conceded, “the work itself is the negro’s.”</p> <p>Relying so heavily on Black labor, however, did not come without its problems, but for Stone these were not the same issues that other southern regions faced. While the rest of the nation grappled with the “negro problem,” Stone observed, in the Delta “we hear nothing about an ignorant mass of negroes dragging the white man down.” “We have but one negro problem,” he claimed, “how to secure more negroes.”</p> <p>Delta planters’ obsession with an adequate labor supply was not unfounded. Historically, a great number of sharecroppers and renters in the cotton South moved at the end of every season, but in the three years leading up to the weevil’s 1909 entry into the Delta, there was a remarkable new influx of workers. Ahead of the encroaching pest, thousands of cotton laborers moved from weevil-plagued regions to the Delta in an effort to escape the insect’s damage. One Greenville paper identified an “EXODUS OF NEGROES” from the boll weevil territories. In southern Mississippi, where the pest was causing significant damage, “the negroes refuse to listen to the appeals of the [local] planters,” and as a result “2,000 negroes have moved…into the Delta.” The paper predicted just what planters feared most, that the boll weevil had pushed workers into the region, and it would soon push them out.</p> <p>Alfred Holt Stone encountered some of these migrating workers, but his ensuing statements contained a foreboding of fear. If workers could so easily leave one cotton-growing region for another, Stone wondered, what would keep these workers in the Delta once the boll weevil arrived? For Stone and his neighbors, the answer was to worry first about keeping workers on their land. “We cannot make cotton without labor,” the planters argued, “and we cannot hold our labor if we pursue the suicidal policy of not only becoming frightened ourselves, but of showing our fright to our negroes.”</p> <p>Landowners’ perception of sharecroppers—their deep-seated White supremacy based on a “natural” understanding of racial hierarchies—shaped their treatment of the landscape, which in turn affected their employment of Black labor. Planters endeavored to keep growing cotton because men and women in their employ had transformed their land into a cotton-producing “promised land.” Delta planters, like other southerners and some historians, used the environment as a way to defend southern distinctiveness. Through the 1910s and 1920s, they observed the boll weevil’s devastation of cotton crops in other parts of the South and saw this as evidence of the Delta’s uniqueness. Their singular faith in their land and the men and women who shaped and re-shaped it, guided their plantation operations well into the twentieth century, through floods, drought, and depression.</p> <p>Planters learned in the fight against the boll weevil that controlling information about the natural world was an effective means for controlling the people who worked it. This approach was one they would return to again and again. Ultimately, there is much that can be learned from the weevil’s Delta invasion and how these marauding insects exposed the extent to which landowners’ beliefs about nature were inseparable from their views on race, society, and economic power.</p> <p><em>James C. Giesen is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. He also serves as executive secretary of the Agricultural History Society, and series editor of the</em> Environmental History and the American South Series <em>published by the University of Georgia Press.</em></p> <h2>Other <em>Mississippi History <span class="caps">NOW</span></em> articles:</h2> <ul><li><a href="/issue/farmers-without-land-the-plight-of-white-tenant-farmers-and-sharecroppers" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers</a></li> </ul><ul><li><a href="/issue/making-the-mississippi-river-over-again" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Making the Mississippi River Over Again</a></li> </ul><ul><li><a href="/issue/alfred-holt-stone-1870-1955-his-unique-collection-of-reading-material-about-people-of-african-descent" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Alfred Hold Stone (1870-1955): His Unique Collection of Reading Material About People Of African Descent</a></li> </ul></div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-sources-formatted--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-sources-formatted.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-sources-formatted.html.twig x field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-sources-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><h3>Sources and suggested readings:</h3> <p>Giesen, James C. <em>Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South</em>. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.</p> <p>Giesen, James C. “’The Truth About the Boll Weevil’: The Nature of Planter Power in the Mississippi Delta.” <em>Environmental History</em> 14, no. 4 (October 2009): 683-704.</p> <p>Harris, J. William. <em>Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation</em>. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.</p> <p>Hollandsworth, James G. <em>Portrait of a Scientific Racist: Alfred Holt Stone of Mississippi</em>. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-images--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-images.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-images.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-images field--type-image field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/312.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;A close view of a stalk of cotton. Photograph courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, PI/1997.0006.0470.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;A close view of a stalk of cotton&quot;}" role="button" title="A close view of a stalk of cotton. Photograph courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, PI/1997.0006.0470." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6863-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;A close view of a stalk of cotton. Photograph courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, PI/1997.0006.0470.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;A close view of a stalk of cotton&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/312.jpg" width="535" height="679" alt="A close view of a stalk of cotton" title="A close view of a stalk of cotton. Photograph courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, PI/1997.0006.0470." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1011.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Cotton squares infested by the boll weevil during the larva and adult stages of the insect’s life cycle. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Farm Bureau Federation Collection, PI/2010.0002.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Boll weevil infested cotton &quot;square&quot;&quot;}" role="button" title="Cotton squares infested by the boll weevil during the larva and adult stages of the insect’s life cycle. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Farm Bureau Federation Collection, PI/2010.0002." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6863-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Cotton squares infested by the boll weevil during the larva and adult stages of the insect’s life cycle. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Farm Bureau Federation Collection, PI/2010.0002.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Boll weevil infested cotton &quot;square&quot;&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1011.jpg" width="500" height="162" alt="Boll weevil infested cotton &quot;square&quot;" title="Cotton squares infested by the boll weevil during the larva and adult stages of the insect’s life cycle. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Farm Bureau Federation Collection, PI/2010.0002." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1012.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;African American laborers work to repair a levee on the river front in Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi, in 1897. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Coovert (J.C.) Photograph Collection, PI/1900.0017.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;African American laborers work to repair a levee&quot;}" role="button" title="African American laborers work to repair a levee on the river front in Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi, in 1897. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Coovert (J.C.) Photograph Collection, PI/1900.0017." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6863-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;African American laborers work to repair a levee on the river front in Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi, in 1897. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Coovert (J.C.) Photograph Collection, PI/1900.0017.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;African American laborers work to repair a levee&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1012.jpg" width="500" height="400" alt="African American laborers work to repair a levee" title="African American laborers work to repair a levee on the river front in Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi, in 1897. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Coovert (J.C.) Photograph Collection, PI/1900.0017." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/1013.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;African American farmers pick cotton in the Mississippi Delta during the 1890s. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Coovert (J.C.) Photograph Collection, PI/1900.0017.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;African American farmers pick cotton in the Mississippi Delta during the 1890s&quot;}" role="button" title="African American farmers pick cotton in the Mississippi Delta during the 1890s. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Coovert (J.C.) Photograph Collection, PI/1900.0017." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6863-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;African American farmers pick cotton in the Mississippi Delta during the 1890s. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Coovert (J.C.) Photograph Collection, PI/1900.0017.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;African American farmers pick cotton in the Mississippi Delta during the 1890s&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/1013.jpg" width="500" height="414" alt="African American farmers pick cotton in the Mississippi Delta during the 1890s" title="African American farmers pick cotton in the Mississippi Delta during the 1890s. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Coovert (J.C.) Photograph Collection, PI/1900.0017." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/529.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Alfred Holt Stone (1870-1955)Planter, collector, tax commissioner.1935 drawing by William Dresser. ??Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Stone Collection, PI/1999.0001??.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Alfred Holt Stone&quot;}" role="button" title="Alfred Holt Stone (1870-1955)Planter, collector, tax commissioner.1935 drawing by William Dresser. ??Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Stone Collection, PI/1999.0001??." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-6863-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Alfred Holt Stone (1870-1955)Planter, collector, tax commissioner.1935 drawing by William Dresser. ??Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Stone Collection, PI/1999.0001??.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Alfred Holt Stone&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/529.jpg" width="535" height="453" alt="Alfred Holt Stone" title="Alfred Holt Stone (1870-1955)Planter, collector, tax commissioner.1935 drawing by William Dresser. ??Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Stone Collection, PI/1999.0001??." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Tue, 03 Mar 2015 21:03:28 +0000 usnext 6863 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov The Rural Electrification of Northeast Mississippi http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/the-rural-electrification-of-northeast-mississippi <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--issue.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The Rural Electrification of Northeast Mississippi</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--issue.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--issue.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 10/01/2011 - 06:00</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-publication-date.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-publication-date.html.twig * field--datetime.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig' --> October 2011 <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> by Sara E. Morris <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-theme.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-theme.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/21" hreflang="en">Industry and Agriculture</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-time-period.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7" hreflang="en">Bridging Hardship, 1928-1945</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--issue.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Electric power has been called “man’s most useful servant.” It heats and cools homes and businesses, cooks and preserves food, illuminates a dark room or street, and powers machinery, televisions, electronics, and transportation.</p> <p>Electric power was first available in the United States in 1882 when Thomas Alva Edison created the country’s first commercial power plant in New York City. The power plant provided electricity to customers within a square mile. Edison had already developed an incandescent light bulb in 1879 that was practical and safe for home use.</p> <p>By 1930, nearly fifty years later, 84.8 percent of all U.S. homes in large urban areas and small towns had electrical service, but only 10.4 percent of rural homes had this luxury.  In that same year, only 1.5 percent of Mississippi farm homes had electrical lights, the least of any state in the country.</p> <p>Homes that were wired for electricity for the most part were in densely populated areas where customers used significant amounts of electricity, which was provided by commercial electric utility companies. With power lines costing around $2,000 a mile to build in the mid-1930s, the commercial companies had no immediate plans to service rural areas, thinking that operating costs would exceed potential profits.</p> <h2>Farm life without electricity</h2> <p>Mississippi farm residents in 1930 completed household and farming chores in the ways of their ancestors without electricity and indoor plumbing. It made work on the farm and in the farmhouse difficult and time-consuming. Doing the laundry, for example, usually took a whole day and a great amount of physical effort.  First, buckets of water were pumped from a well, usually located several yards from the house, and heated in a large kettle over a wood-burning fire. A woman then used her hands, usually homemade soap, washboard, and physical energy to clean the family laundry. </p> <p>In contrast, women with electricity and indoor plumbing in more urban areas could put the dirty laundry in the washing machine, flip a switch and have hot water flow from the water heater into the appliance.  Once full, the washer took care of cleaning the clothes. </p> <p>Thirty years into the 20th century, the drastic difference between life with electricity and life without it was one factor that encouraged many farm dwellers, particularly young people, to leave the farm behind for life in the city. Other reasons explaining why people left rural America included higher paying jobs, better living conditions, and a life that was not isolated from the world. In the city they could have electricity, own a radio to listen to music, entertainment programs, and news of the day, and have easy access to a social life.</p> <h2>Tupelo – “First <span class="caps">TVA</span> City”</h2> <p>People concerned with improving rural life and decreasing rural-to-urban migration believed electricity was among the most important factors in making rural life more appealing.  Senator George W. Norris, a Nebraskan Republican, and Mississippi’s John E. Rankin, a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1921 to 1953, were the two most dedicated politicians to the cause of rural electrification.  Soon after U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, his administration designed programs to combat the economic problems of the Great Depression, to create jobs to end unemployment, and to improve the lives of average Americans.  Norris and Rankin lobbied to include rural electrification in the New Deal programs. </p> <p>Created by the U. S. Congress on May 18, 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority (<span class="caps">TVA</span>) aimed to better the living and economic conditions of citizens in seven Southeastern states, including Mississippi.  Government officials anticipated improving one of the country’s poorest regions by controlling the Tennessee River, promoting soil conservation practices, increasing non-agricultural jobs, and providing affordable electricity. Thus, distributing electricity created by TVA’s newly constructed dams on the Tennessee River became an early objective of the <span class="caps">TVA</span>. </p> <p>Tupelo, Mississippi, was near <span class="caps">TVA</span>’s Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The electricity generated by this hydroelectric power plant, which uses falling water to turn generators that produce electricity, was ready for customers. Rankin’s position in Congress resulted in Tupelo becoming the first municipality to purchase <span class="caps">TVA</span> power. Tupelo officially became the “First <span class="caps">TVA</span> City” in 1934 and the city’s residents could purchase electricity at some of the lowest rates in the United States.</p> <h2>The Corinth Experiment</h2> <p>But the question remained of how to provide electricity to all rural Americans.  Federal officials determined that electric power cooperatives, owned by the customers, were the best way to distribute electricity in rural areas.  Rural organizations, such as the Grange and Farmers’ Alliance, used cooperative ventures in the 19th century, so this business model was not new to rural Americans. </p> <p>But before establishing a national cooperative system to distribute electrical power, officials wanted to test the model. And they did it in Mississippi through the creation of “The Corinth Experiment” in the form of the Alcorn County Electric Power Association (<span class="caps">ACEPA</span>). Congressman Rankin had arranged for a group of Alcorn County businessmen and a <span class="caps">TVA</span> official to meet in January 1934 at McPeters’ Furniture Store in Corinth, the county seat. There they established <span class="caps">ACEPA</span>, the first electric power cooperative in the United States. The cooperative would be a member-owned organization in which all members would be represented by an elected board of directors. The population of Alcorn County was similar to much of the South—it was dependent on one crop, in this case cotton, and had a high rate of <a href="/issue/farmers-without-land-the-plight-of-white-tenant-farmers-and-sharecroppers" rel="noopener" target="_blank">tenant farmers and sharecroppers</a>. Officials believed that if an electric power cooperative could succeed in Alcorn County, Mississippi, it could do so anywhere in the United States.</p> <p>The federal government provided a loan of $114,632 at a 3 percent interest rate to <span class="caps">ACEPA</span>, which it used to fund the stringing of power lines and other start-up costs. People wanting electricity paid a membership fee to the cooperative and committed to using a minimum amount of kilowatt-hours per month.  Individuals were responsible for wiring their homes and barns.  Although initial estimates indicated it would take the new cooperative thirteen years to pay back the initial loan, in the first year it became clear that it would take less than half of the expected time.</p> <h2>Rural Electrification Administration</h2> <p>In November 1934, President Roosevelt visited Northeast Mississippi.  While in Corinth on November 17, he praised citizens for “giving an opportunity to the people who live on the farm [to be] equal with the people who live in the city.” In Tupelo the next day, the president spoke and addressed his critics who did not believe it was the government’s responsibility to provide electricity to its citizens.  He stated that the experiments taking place in Northeast Mississippi were grassroots and community-based programs, not a federalization of private enterprise.</p> <p>The successes of <span class="caps">TVA</span> and <span class="caps">ACEPA</span>, which Roosevelt observed on his trip, resulted in the creation of an important New Deal program for rural America, the Rural Electrification Administration, or <span class="caps">REA</span>. Roosevelt established this program through Executive Order 7037 on May 11, 1935; it would loan money at low interest rates to electrical cooperatives like <span class="caps">ACEPA</span> throughout the United States.  </p> <p>Due to the presence of <span class="caps">TVA</span> and the work of Congressman Rankin, Northeast Mississippi quickly became one of the nation’s earliest adopters of rural electrification.  The Monroe County Electric Cooperative in Amory was the first in Mississippi to provide power to its members with <span class="caps">REA</span> funds.  Additional electric power cooperatives formed throughout the state and Rankin continued to advocate for rural electrification.  </p> <p>While Rankin could have mentioned how electricity changed the work lives of any of his constituents, he consistently spoke of how electricity improved the lives of women.  In his opinion, they gained the most by having access to electricity.  During his congressional speeches he spoke of the tough realities of life without electrical power and then quoted letters in which women told him that <span class="caps">TVA</span> and <span class="caps">REA</span> were “the greatest blessing” and were “the difference between drudgery and luxury.”  With electricity “We have just now begun to live,” explained one happy Mississippi woman. <a href="http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=r000056" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Rankin</a> promised to advocate for electricity and better living conditions “as long as I live, whether in public or private life, or until we electrify every farm home in America at rates the farmers can afford to pay.” </p> <p>Through the examples of the people in Northeast Mississippi, rural citizens across the nation received electricity sooner. And by 1940, 27,670 farm homes in Mississippi had electric lights, a significant increase from 4,792 just ten years earlier. </p> <p><cite>Sara E. Morris, Ph.D., <span class="caps">MLS</span>, is associate librarian for American history, University of Kansas Libraries</cite>.</p> <p>Watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZchKXFpaDg" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Power and the Land</a>, a 38-minute film of an American farm family before, and after, rural electrification. Produced by Joris Ivens in 1940 for the Rural Electrification Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Film from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, uploaded to YouTube by PublicResourceOrg, August 31, 2010. (Accessed September 2011)</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-sources-formatted--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-sources-formatted.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-sources-formatted.html.twig x field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-sources-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><h3>References:</h3> <p>Born, Emily. <cite>Power to the People: A History of Rural Electrification in Indiana</cite>. Indianapolis: Indiana Statewide Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives, 1985, pp. 14-16.</p> <p>Brown, D. Clayton. <cite>Electricity for Rural America: The Fight for the <span class="caps">REA</span></cite>. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.</p> <p>Roosevelt, Franklin D. <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/ppotpus?key=title;page=browse;value=p" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt</a>. The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, University of Michigan Digital Library. (Accessed September 2011)</p> <p>United States Congress. Congressional Record. Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office.</p> <p>United States Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. <cite>Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970s</cite>. White Plains, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1989.</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-images--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-images.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-images.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-images field--type-image field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/959.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Early 20th century postcard of cotton ready for the market in Corinth, Mississippi, where &quot;The Corinth Experiment&quot; would be conducted in 1934. Federal officials believed that if an electric cooperative could succeed in Alcorn County with its rural population similar to much of the South, it could do so anywhere in the United States. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Cooper Postcard Collection, Call No. PI/1992.0001/Box 21, Folder 1.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Cotton scene in Corinth&quot;}" role="button" title="Early 20th century postcard of cotton ready for the market in Corinth, Mississippi, where &quot;The Corinth Experiment&quot; would be conducted in 1934. Federal officials believed that if an electric cooperative could succeed in Alcorn County with its rural population similar to much of the South, it could do so anywhere in the United States. 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Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Cooper Postcard Collection, Call No. PI/1992.0001/Box 21, Folder 1.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Cotton scene in Corinth&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/959.jpg" width="535" height="339" alt="Cotton scene in Corinth" title="Early 20th century postcard of cotton ready for the market in Corinth, Mississippi, where &quot;The Corinth Experiment&quot; would be conducted in 1934. Federal officials believed that if an electric cooperative could succeed in Alcorn County with its rural population similar to much of the South, it could do so anywhere in the United States. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Cooper Postcard Collection, Call No. PI/1992.0001/Box 21, Folder 1." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/958.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;The streets of Tupelo are lined with Mississippians who greet President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, on their tour of Northeast Mississippi in November 1934. 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Courtesy Tennessee Valley Authority." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/965.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Tupelo, Mississippi, the &quot;First TVA City.&quot; Courtesy Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Tupelo &quot;First TVA City&quot; sign&quot;}" role="button" title="Tupelo, Mississippi, the &quot;First TVA City.&quot; Courtesy Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7127-uE8leMIIccE" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Tupelo, Mississippi, the &quot;First TVA City.&quot; Courtesy Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Tupelo &quot;First TVA City&quot; sign&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/965.jpg" width="535" height="535" alt="Tupelo &quot;First TVA City&quot; sign" title="Tupelo, Mississippi, the &quot;First TVA City.&quot; Courtesy Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/957.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;The TVA powerhouse in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1935. 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Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF33-002054-M2." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/960.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Electricity made farm work easier and less time-consuming. Farmer seen here with an electric feed grinder in 1930s. Courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, New Deal Network.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;electric feed grinder&quot;}" role="button" title="Electricity made farm work easier and less time-consuming. 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Roosevelt Presidential Library, New Deal Network." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/961.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Before electricity was available to rural homes, the family laundry was an all-day task done by hand. Courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, New Deal Network.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Doing the laundry before electricity&quot;}" role="button" title="Before electricity was available to rural homes, the family laundry was an all-day task done by hand. 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Roosevelt Presidential Library, New Deal Network." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/962.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Women with electricity in more urban areas in the 1930s could load the laundry in a washing machine, flip a switch to have hot water flow into the appliance, and the machine cleaned the clothes. Courtesy Franklin D. 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Roosevelt Presidential Library, New Deal Network." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/sites/default/files/imported-images/954.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;U. S. Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi testifies before a Joint Congressional Committee in December 1938 that TVA power had resulted in an annual saving of $556,000,000 to consumers of electricity. Rankin co-authored the Tennessee Valley Authority Act. 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Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-H22D-5158." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-lesson-plan--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-lesson-plan field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/lesson-plan/the-rural-electrification-of-northeast-mississippi-lesson-plan" hreflang="en">The Rural Electrification of Northeast Mississippi Lesson Plan </a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Sat, 01 Oct 2011 11:00:00 +0000 usnext 7127 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov The Rural Electrification of Northeast Mississippi Lesson Plan http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/lesson-plan/the-rural-electrification-of-northeast-mississippi-lesson-plan <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The Rural Electrification of Northeast Mississippi Lesson Plan </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Mon, 09/26/2011 - 10:17</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><h2><span class="caps">OVERVIEW</span></h2> <p>Between 1930 and 1940 nearly 23,000 farm homes in Mississippi received access to electricity for the first time. This access was due in large part to President Franklin Roosevelt’s support of rural electrification and to the efforts of John E. Rankin, a Mississippi representative in the U.S. Congress. Rankin co-authored the bill for the Tennessee Valley Authority (<span class="caps">TVA</span>), which led to the creation of the agency by Congress in 1933, and to Northeast Mississippi becoming one of the first rural areas to receive electricity.</p> <h2><span class="caps">CURRICULAR</span> <span class="caps">CONNECTIONS</span></h2> <p>Mississippi Studies Framework: Competencies 1, 3 and 4.</p> <h2><span class="caps">TEACHING</span> <span class="caps">LEVEL</span></h2> <p>Grades 7 through 12</p> <h2><span class="caps">MATERIALS</span> <span class="caps">AND</span> <span class="caps">EQUIPMENT</span></h2> <ul><li><cite>Mississippi History Now</cite> article, <a href="/issue/the-rural-electrification-of-northeast-mississippi" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Rural Electrification of Northeast Mississippi</a></li> <li>Unlined paper for cartoons</li> <li>Notebook paper</li> </ul><h2><span class="caps">OBJECTIVES</span></h2> <p>The students will:</p> <ul><li>Determine supporting details for generalizations.</li> <li>Compose an editorial.</li> <li>Create a political cartoon.</li> </ul><h2><span class="caps">OPENING</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">LESSON</span></h2> <p>The teacher will ask students to envision their lives without electricity. What would life be like without it? How has electricity changed the way we live? The teacher will explain to the students that they will study the effects of electricity on the rural areas of Mississippi.</p> <h2><span class="caps">DEVELOPING</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">LESSON</span></h2> <p>Students may work alone or with a partner on the list of generalizations found at the end of this lesson. The students will record their answers to support the accuracy of the generalizations as they read the <cite>Mississippi History Now</cite> article. After the students have completed the assignment, allow student volunteers to share their answers. The board can be used to record student responses which will allow the class to check their answers.</p> <p>The teacher will ask the students to consider who would have supported the establishment of the <span class="caps">TVA</span> and who would not have supported its establishment. The teacher can record the student responses on the board during the class discussion. Examples: rural families, private utility companies, unemployed workers, dislocated persons because of <span class="caps">TVA</span> constructions, etc. The teacher may need to assist students with making the list.</p> <p>Once the list is completed through a class discussion, place students into groups of no more than three. Instruct the students to create a political cartoon or write a newspaper editorial that expresses the view point of one of the groups on the list. Each student group can be assigned a different perspective. Students can use the <cite>Mississippi History Now</cite> article as well as other resources to create their political cartoon or write their editorials. The teacher may need to discuss the concept of political cartoons and editorials prior to the assignment.</p> <h2><span class="caps">CLOSING</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">LESSON</span></h2> <p>Allow the students to share their cartoons or editorials with the class.</p> <h2><span class="caps">ASSESSING</span> <span class="caps">STUDENT</span> <span class="caps">LEARNING</span></h2> <ul><li>Generalizations</li> <li>Class participation</li> <li>Political cartoons</li> <li>Editorials</li> </ul><h2><span class="caps">EXTENDING</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">LESSON</span></h2> <ul><li>Invite a spokesperson from a local electric power association or <span class="caps">TVA</span> to speak to the class.</li> <li>Students can research programs created by President Roosevelt’s New Deal.</li> <li>Students can research jobs in the energy industry, or specifically with <a href="http://www.tva.gov/" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><span class="caps">TVA</span></a>. (Accessed September 2011)</li> <li>Students can research various types of energy, renewable resources, and/or energy-saving strategies.</li> <li>Students can research the areas served by the <span class="caps">TVA</span>.</li> </ul><h3>Rural Electrification in the 1930s Generalizations</h3> <p><strong>Instructions:</strong> Generalizations are broad statements that represent main ideas about important events. Using the <cite>Mississippi History Now</cite> article on rural electrification, locate at least three or four details that support the accuracy of the generalizations listed below and note them next to the generalization to which they apply.</p> <ol><li>Electricity made life easier.</li> <li>Lack of electricity caused a migration from rural to urban areas.</li> <li>Counties in Northeast Mississippi led the way in bringing electricity to rural areas.</li> <li>The federal government played a role in providing greater access to electricity.</li> </ol></div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-lp-author--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-lp-author.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-lp-author.html.twig * field--string.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-lp-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Karla Smith</div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-issue--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-issue.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-issue.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-issue field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/issue/the-rural-electrification-of-northeast-mississippi" hreflang="en">The Rural Electrification of Northeast Mississippi</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme-lp--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-theme-lp.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-theme-lp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme-lp field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Theme</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/21" hreflang="en">Industry and Agriculture</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period-lp--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period-lp.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-time-period-lp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period-lp field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Time Period</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7" hreflang="en">Bridging Hardship, 1928-1945</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:17:22 +0000 usnext 7129 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov Senator Pat Harrison: New Deal Wheelhorse (1933-1941) Suspicious of His Load http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/senator-pat-harrison-new-deal-wheelhorse-suspicious-of-his-load-1933-1941 <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--issue.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Senator Pat Harrison: New Deal Wheelhorse (1933-1941) Suspicious of His Load</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--issue.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--issue.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Thu, 09/01/2011 - 06:00</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-publication-date.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-publication-date.html.twig * field--datetime.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig' --> September 2011 <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-publication-date--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> by Martha H. Swain <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/mshistorynow/templates/field/field--node--field-author--issue.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-theme.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-theme.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/15" hreflang="en">Governors and Senators</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-time-period.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5" hreflang="en">The World Remade, 1866–1902</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6" hreflang="en">Promise and Peril, 1903–1927</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7" hreflang="en">Bridging Hardship, 1928-1945</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--issue.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>In 1936, <cite>Time</cite> magazine suggested that “better than any living man, Senator Byron Patton Harrison of Mississippi represents in his spindle-legged, round-shouldered, freckle-faced person the modern history of the Democratic Party.” By then Harrison had been in politics since 1906 and now, thirty years later, he was chairman of the most powerful committee in the United States Senate. His political era had begun when the Democratic Party was in the doldrums, yet he had won national attention in the 1920s when Republicans held the presidency and control of Congress. When the <cite>Time</cite> writer singled him out, he was a Senate stalwart and chairman of the Committee on Finance.</p> <h2>Early years</h2> <p>Byron Patton Harrison was born in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, on August 29, 1881. His public school education was in Crystal Springs and after high school graduation as class valedictorian in 1899, he attended the summer term at the University of Mississippi. In the fall, however, he transferred to Louisiana State University on a baseball scholarship, but lack of funds caused him to drop out after two years. Harrison’s ability on the mound brought him an offer to pitch for the Pickens, Mississippi, semiprofessional team in the Old Tomato League, an opportunity he eagerly accepted. He then moved to Leakesville, Mississippi, where he taught school and became principal of the local high school. While teaching school in Leakesville he studied law in the evening and gained admission to the Mississippi bar in 1902.</p> <p>Like many aspiring politicians, his first elected office was as a district attorney – in 1906 he was elected in the newly created Second Judicial District that caused his move to Gulfport. That Mississippi Gulf Coast town became his home base for the rest of his life. His 1910 campaign for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives first introduced Mississippians to his brand of oratory, and they found it compelling and delightful. It made him a great favorite on the campaign trail. His longtime friend Clayton Rand, a Mississippi Gulf Coast editor, described Harrison’s style as spellbinding, “an eloquence that flowed like a babbling brook through a field of flowers.”</p> <h2>Gadfly of the Senate</h2> <p>Entering the House of Representatives in 1911 as its second youngest member, “Pat,” as he was now called, immediately made his mark as an effective debater against Republican tariff and tax policies. After the election of the Democratic President Woodrow Wilson in 1912, Harrison became a faithful adherent to Wilson’s proposed progressive legislation known as the New Freedom. Harrison presented such a remarkable contrast to Mississippi’s U. S. Senator <a href="/issue/james-kimble-vardaman-thirty-sixth-governor-of-mississippi-1904-1908" rel="noopener" target="_blank">James K. Vardaman</a> both in style and in support of President Wilson’s preparedness program and the entry into <a href="/issue/World-War-I-the-great-war-1917-1918-loyalty-and-dissent-in-mississippi" rel="noopener" target="_blank">World War I</a> that Wilson personally endorsed Harrison when he ran to unseat Vardaman.</p> <p>With the support of Wilson and his own increasing popularity with voters over his four terms as a congressman (1911-1919), Harrison defeated Vardaman in the 1918 U. S. Senate race and then was re-elected in 1924, 1930 (without opposition), and 1936. In the Republican-controlled Senate and with Republican presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge in office, Harrison was called the “gadfly of the Senate,” for his witty and stinging rebuke of Republican policies. In 1924 he gave a rousing keynote address at the Democratic presidential nominating convention at Madison Square Garden in which he focused upon the scandals of the Harding administration. (To read his speech, scroll to the bottom of the page at the University of Mississippi’s <a href="https://olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/archives/exhibits/hail_to_the_chief/exhibitions/elections/1924.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Hail to the Chief exhibition</a>.) Historian Robert K. Murray wrote that Harrison “could talk on anything” and he “gave the convention a gourmet sampling of his forensic talents.” Pat Harrison is the only Mississippian ever to make a national convention keynote address.</p> <h2>I’m a good Democrat …</h2> <p>In 1932 Harrison was an early supporter of the anticipated nomination of New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Democratic candidate for president. At the National Democratic Convention in Chicago he and his Senate colleague, <a href="/issue/hubert-d-stephens" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Hubert D. Stephens</a> of New Albany, held the Mississippi delegation for Roosevelt. With the ascendancy of a Democratic president and Congress in 1933, Harrison became the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, a position that placed him among the most powerful of Senate leaders. It was from this committee that the core of the economic legislation of the First New Deal (1933-1935) emerged for floor debate and passage: the Economy Act, repeal of prohibition, the National Industrial Recovery Act (all in 1933), and the Reciprocal Tariff Act of 1934. Both the repeal of prohibition and the <span class="caps">NIRA</span> turned on their tax features. Harrison was not in favor of the repeal of prohibition but he defended his work on the bill: “I am a good Democrat and I go through.”</p> <p>After the cards of the First New Deal had been dealt, Mississippi had drawn at least $100,000,000 in needed funds. The entire Mississippi congressional delegation had supported Roosevelt’s requests. As Fred Sullens, the salty editor of the <cite>Jackson Daily News</cite>, roared, “We will stick with him until hell freezes over and then skate around with him on the ice.” Most Mississippians agreed.</p> <p>Harrison concurred: “It is my duty to work in harness.” And he did as the Second New Deal (1935-1937) began with FDR’s request for a <a href="http://www.ssa.gov/history/35act.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Social Security Act</a>. Harrison was the prime mover of that measure as it went to the president for his signature in August 1935. He also went along with the Revenue Act of 1935 that included a “share-the-wealth” feature intended to placate the demand of angry millions who wanted a “soak the rich” tax scale. Harrison was not pleased with that bill because he believed that tax measures should be for revenue only and not for a redistribution of wealth. His loyalty to the president led him to ensure the bill was passed. It was then that political pundits began to see that Harrison was a “New Deal wheelhorse suspicious of his load.”</p> <p>Events in 1937 were pivotal in the growing breach between Harrison and the president. In February, Roosevelt announced a plan for federal court reform that would permit him to name six additional Supreme Court justices. The “Big Four,” as the press called senators Harrison, James Byrnes of South Carolina, Joseph Robinson of Arkansas (Senate Majority Leader), and Vice President John Nance Garner, were increasingly wary of the centralizing tendencies of the administration. Their dissatisfaction with the “court-packing” plan was widely known, and the bill failed to pass.</p> <p>After the death of Robinson in July, the general belief was that Senate Democrats would elect Harrison as majority leader, not Alben Barkley of Kentucky. Just before the vote, Roosevelt wrote a letter of support for Barkley. Harrison lost by one vote. Thus Harrison believed that the president was ungrateful for the “load” he had carried for the administration. The majority leadership would have been Harrison’s had his Mississippi colleague, <a href="/issue/theodore-gilmore-bilbo-thirty-ninth-and-forty-third-governor-of-mississippi-1916-1920-1928-1932" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Theodore G. Bilbo</a>, voted for him. The enmity between the two went far beyond their dissimilarity – Harrison was no racist demagogue – to their rivalry for control of New Deal job patronage and the dispersing of federal money in their home state.</p> <p>When other tax bills drafted by the president’s design reached the Finance Committee, Harrison managed to weaken them considerably. Harrison diluted the revenue bills of 1938 and 1939 that reflected the president’s continued insistence of taxes on capital gains and undistributed profits. Despite his loss to Barkley in 1937, by 1939 Harrison was at the zenith of his power. That year Washington newspapers voted him the “most influential” senator. Turner Catledge, the Mississippi-born managing editor of the <cite>New York Times</cite>, had described the Mississippian as the best “horse-trader” for his way of cajoling colleagues to pass his Finance Committee legislation. His influence, Catledge said, stemmed from the fact that Harrison never “welched” on a promise: “If Harrison told you something you could take it to the bank.”</p> <h2>Keen of intellect, sound in principle</h2> <p>The Roosevelt-Harrison breach ended in 1940 when the threat of war made defense preparation the order of the day. Harrison supported Roosevelt’s bid for a third term in 1940: “We cannot afford to make a change of leaders.” In 1941 Harrison was elected president <cite>pro tempore</cite> of the Senate and when the president wanted a lend-lease measure passed to aid Britain and her allies, he asked that the bill go to the Finance Committee rather than to the Committee on Foreign Relations because he knew Harrison could “wrangle” it to passage. The bill became law in March 1941. By then Harrison was seriously ill with colon cancer and died on June 22, 1941. He was not quite sixty years old.</p> <p>Accolades for the departed Senate giant were many and sincere. Roosevelt said of him that he had been “keen of intellect, sound in principle, shrewd in judgment [with] rare gifts of kindly wit, humor, and irony.” He was “square, approachable, and intensely human” said the editor of the Sunflower County, Mississippi, newspaper.</p> <p>Pat Harrison has been largely forgotten in the years since his death. But it could be said that no Mississippi senator has since had such forensic talents and widespread popularity as Harrison that he would be invited to national podiums and would be sought after to campaign for Democratic colleagues across the country.</p> <p><cite>Martha H. Swain, Ph.D., is professor emerita at Texas Woman’s University and the author of</cite> Pat Harrison: The New Deal Years.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-sources-formatted--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-sources-formatted.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-sources-formatted.html.twig x field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-sources-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><h3>Bibliography</h3> <p>Catledge, Turner. Interview by Martha Swain, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University.</p> <p>Morgan, Chester. <cite>Redneck Liberal: Theodore G. Bilbo and the New Deal</cite>. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.</p> <p>Murray, Robert K. <cite>The 103rd Ballot</cite>. New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1976.</p> <p>Pat Harrison Papers. University of Mississippi Special Collections</p> <p>Patterson, James T. <cite>Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal</cite>. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967.</p> <p>Swain, Martha H. <cite>Pat Harrison: The New Deal Years</cite>. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1978.</p> <p>Swain, Martha H. “The Lion and the Fox: The Relationship of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Senator Pat Harrison,” <cite>Journal of Mississippi History</cite>, November 1976.</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-long.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-images--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-images.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-images.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-images field--type-image field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/sites/default/files/imported-images/946.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Pat Harrison at age 2. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Pat Harrison&quot;}" role="button" title="Pat Harrison at age 2. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp;amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7125-FiVCzKRGBUQ" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Pat Harrison at age 2. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Pat Harrison&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/946.jpg" width="535" height="783" alt="Pat Harrison" title="Pat Harrison at age 2. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/sites/default/files/imported-images/947.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison gave a rousing keynote address at the 1924 Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Harrison as keynote speaker&quot;}" role="button" title="Senator Harrison gave a rousing keynote address at the 1924 Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp;amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7125-FiVCzKRGBUQ" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison gave a rousing keynote address at the 1924 Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Harrison as keynote speaker&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/947.jpg" width="535" height="404" alt="Harrison as keynote speaker" title="Senator Harrison gave a rousing keynote address at the 1924 Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/sites/default/files/imported-images/951.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Berryman cartoon on speculation that Harrison would be selected as FDR&#039;s running mate in the 1932 presidential race. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Berryman cartoon shows Harrison as possible FDR running mate&quot;}" role="button" title="Berryman cartoon on speculation that Harrison would be selected as FDR&#039;s running mate in the 1932 presidential race. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp;amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7125-FiVCzKRGBUQ" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Berryman cartoon on speculation that Harrison would be selected as FDR&#039;s running mate in the 1932 presidential race. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Berryman cartoon shows Harrison as possible FDR running mate&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/951.jpg" width="535" height="479" alt="Berryman cartoon shows Harrison as possible FDR running mate" title="Berryman cartoon on speculation that Harrison would be selected as FDR&#039;s running mate in the 1932 presidential race. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/sites/default/files/imported-images/949.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison, right, in white suit, watches as President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act. Harrison was the prime mover of the measure as it went to the president for his signature in August 1935. Courtesy Felton M. Johnston Collections, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi. &quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison and social security&quot;}" role="button" title="Senator Harrison, right, in white suit, watches as President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act. Harrison was the prime mover of the measure as it went to the president for his signature in August 1935. Courtesy Felton M. Johnston Collections, Archives &amp;amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi. " data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7125-FiVCzKRGBUQ" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison, right, in white suit, watches as President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act. Harrison was the prime mover of the measure as it went to the president for his signature in August 1935. Courtesy Felton M. Johnston Collections, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi. &quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison and social security&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/949.jpg" width="535" height="416" alt="Senator Harrison and social security" title="Senator Harrison, right, in white suit, watches as President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act. Harrison was the prime mover of the measure as it went to the president for his signature in August 1935. Courtesy Felton M. Johnston Collections, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi. " loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/sites/default/files/imported-images/952.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;1938 Berryman cartoon shows Harrison directing the United States (Uncle Sam) to take the &quot;decrease spending&quot; road over &quot;increase taxes&quot; road. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi. &quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Berryman cartoon shows Harrison cut spending or increase taxes&quot;}" role="button" title="1938 Berryman cartoon shows Harrison directing the United States (Uncle Sam) to take the &quot;decrease spending&quot; road over &quot;increase taxes&quot; road. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp;amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi. " data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7125-FiVCzKRGBUQ" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;1938 Berryman cartoon shows Harrison directing the United States (Uncle Sam) to take the &quot;decrease spending&quot; road over &quot;increase taxes&quot; road. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi. &quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Berryman cartoon shows Harrison cut spending or increase taxes&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/952.jpg" width="535" height="451" alt="Berryman cartoon shows Harrison cut spending or increase taxes" title="1938 Berryman cartoon shows Harrison directing the United States (Uncle Sam) to take the &quot;decrease spending&quot; road over &quot;increase taxes&quot; road. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi. " loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/sites/default/files/imported-images/948.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison in 1940. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Harrison portrait&quot;}" role="button" title="Senator Harrison in 1940. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp;amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7125-FiVCzKRGBUQ" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison in 1940. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Harrison portrait&quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/948.jpg" width="535" height="683" alt="Harrison portrait" title="Senator Harrison in 1940. Courtesy Pat Harrison Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'colorbox_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/sites/default/files/imported-images/950.jpg" aria-controls="colorbox" aria-label="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison, as chairman of the Committee on Finance, gives a close look at the national budget in this 1940 Berryman cartoon. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Berryman cartoon &quot;}" role="button" title="Senator Harrison, as chairman of the Committee on Finance, gives a close look at the national budget in this 1940 Berryman cartoon. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp;amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-issue-7125-FiVCzKRGBUQ" class="colorbox" data-cbox-img-attrs="{&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Senator Harrison, as chairman of the Committee on Finance, gives a close look at the national budget in this 1940 Berryman cartoon. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Berryman cartoon &quot;}"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img src="/sites/default/files/imported-images/950.jpg" width="535" height="493" alt="Berryman cartoon " title="Senator Harrison, as chairman of the Committee on Finance, gives a close look at the national budget in this 1940 Berryman cartoon. Courtesy C. K. Berryman Collection, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Mississippi." loading="lazy" typeof="foaf:Image" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/colorbox/templates/colorbox-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-lesson-plan--issue.html.twig * field--node--field-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--issue.html.twig * field--field-lesson-plan.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-lesson-plan field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/lesson-plan/senator-pat-harrison-new-deal-wheelhorse-suspicious-of-his-load-1933-1941-lesson-plan" hreflang="en">Senator Pat Harrison: New Deal Wheelhorse (1933-1941) Suspicious of His Load Lesson Plan</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:00:00 +0000 usnext 7125 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov Senator Pat Harrison: New Deal Wheelhorse (1933-1941) Suspicious of His Load Lesson Plan http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/lesson-plan/senator-pat-harrison-new-deal-wheelhorse-suspicious-of-his-load-1933-1941-lesson-plan <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Senator Pat Harrison: New Deal Wheelhorse (1933-1941) Suspicious of His Load Lesson Plan</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/user/5" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">usnext</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--lesson-plan.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Mon, 08/29/2011 - 11:11</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x links--node.html.twig x links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/content/links--node.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><h2><span class="caps">OVERVIEW</span></h2> <p>Senator Pat Harrison served his native state of Mississippi in both the U.S. House of Representatives (1911-1919) and the U.S. Senate (1919-1941). In a political career that spanned more than thirty years, Harrison represented his state and nation during difficult times. He served during World War I, during the 1930s Great Depression, and during the buildup to World War II. It was during these challenging times that Harrison served as chairman of the powerful Committee on Finance in the U.S. Senate. His popularity and respect as a national political figure spanned far beyond the state of Mississippi and could be found at every level of the government.</p> <h2><span class="caps">CURRICULAR</span> <span class="caps">CONNECTIONS</span></h2> <p>Mississippi Studies Framework: Competencies 2 and 5</p> <h2><span class="caps">TEACHING</span> <span class="caps">LEVEL</span></h2> <p>Grades 7 through 12</p> <h2><span class="caps">MATERIALS</span> <span class="caps">AND</span> <span class="caps">EQUIPMENT</span></h2> <ul><li><cite>Mississippi History Now</cite> article on <a href="/issue/senator-pat-harrison-new-deal-wheelhorse-suspicious-of-his-load-1933-1941" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Senator Pat Harrison</a>.</li> <li>Pen/pencil</li> <li>Notebook paper</li> <li>Unlined paper</li> <li>Colored pencils/markers</li> <li>Whiteboard</li> <li>Computers for projects (optional)</li> </ul><h2><span class="caps">OBJECTIVES</span></h2> <p>The students will:</p> <ul><li>Construct a timeline that lists significant events in the life of Pat Harrison.</li> <li>Determine characteristics of a political leader.</li> <li>Create a project on the career of Pat Harrison.</li> </ul><h2><span class="caps">OPENING</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">LESSON</span></h2> <p>The teacher will ask the students the following questions:</p> <ul><li>Can you name the two legislative bodies of the U.S. Congress?</li> <li>Can you name the Mississippians who have served, or serve, the state as a representative in the U. S. House of Representatives or as a senator in the U. S. Senate?</li> </ul><p>The teacher will record student answers on the board and add Pat Harrison’s name to the list if he is not mentioned. The teacher will explain to the students that they will now learn about the service of one of Mississippi’s U. S. senators – Byron Patton “Pat” Harrison.</p> <h2><span class="caps">DEVELOPING</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">LESSON</span></h2> <ol><li>Students will be instructed to read the <cite>Mississippi History Now</cite> article. While working with a partner, students will construct a timeline of significant events in the life of Pat Harrison.</li> <li>After the students have completed the timeline, the teacher will ask students to share some of the most significant events in Harrison’s life. The teacher can record the student responses by listing them on the board.</li> <li>The teacher will ask for student volunteers to suggest characteristics and qualifications they think an individual should possess in order to serve in the U.S. Senate. As students share their suggestions, the teacher can record them on the board.</li> <li>The teacher will place the students into groups of three or four. Each student group will be assigned at least two characteristics/qualifications from the list on the board. The student groups are to use the <cite>Mississippi History Now</cite> article to find examples where Senator Pat Harrison exhibited any of the listed characteristics. Once the student groups are able to locate one or more examples for each of their characteristics/qualifications, the teacher will ask each group to share their examples with the class.</li> <li>For this portion of the lesson, the teacher will instruct the students to complete one of the following activities/projects: <ul><li>Design a political cartoon about an event in Washington during the 1930s or early 1940s. After the students have completed their political cartoon, have them go online to the University of Mississippi Archives and Special Collections to study the political cartoons in the <a href="https://egrove.olemiss.edu/berryman/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Clifford K. Berryman Collection</a>. The Berryman cartoons ran in the <cite>Washington Star</cite> from 1924 to 1941 and Senator Harrison was the subject of a Berryman cartoon on many occasions.</li> <li>Design a campaign poster for Senator Harrison’s 1936 election campaign.</li> <li>Write a newspaper article about an event in the career of Senator Harrison.</li> </ul></li> </ol><h2><span class="caps">CLOSING</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">LESSON</span></h2> <p>Allow students to share their activities/projects with the class. After sharing their projects, the teacher will ask the class the following question:</p> <p>President Roosevelt said of Senator Harrison that he was “keen of intellect, sound in principle, shrewd in judgment [with] rare gifts of kindly wit, humor, and irony.” Do you agreed with President Roosevelt? Why?</p> <h2><span class="caps">ASSESSING</span> <span class="caps">STUDENT</span> <span class="caps">LEARNING</span></h2> <ul><li>Class participation</li> <li>Timelines</li> <li>Lists of characteristics for a senator</li> <li>Projects</li> </ul><h2><span class="caps">EXTENDING</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">LESSON</span></h2> <ul><li>Compare and contrast Senator Pat Harrison and Senator Theodore Bilbo. Students can read about Bilbo in <cite>Mississippi History Now</cite>‘s profile of Bilbo as a <a href="/issue/theodore-gilmore-bilbo-thirty-ninth-and-forty-third-governor-of-mississippi-1916-1920-1928-1932" rel="noopener" target="_blank">governor of Mississippi</a>.</li> <li>Research the programs included in the New Deal.</li> <li>Research the careers and accomplishments of the current Mississippi senators.</li> <li>Research the committees of the Senate and House.</li> <li>Teach a unit on the U.S. Senate by using <cite>Mississippi History Now</cite> lesson plans on other <a href="https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/search-block?search_api_fulltext=&amp;field_theme=15&amp;field_time_period=All" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Mississippi U. S. senators and governors</a>.</li> </ul></div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-lp-author--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-lp-author.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-lp-author.html.twig * field--string.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-lp-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Karla Smith</div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-issue--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-issue.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-issue.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-issue field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/issue/senator-pat-harrison-new-deal-wheelhorse-suspicious-of-his-load-1933-1941" hreflang="en">Senator Pat Harrison: New Deal Wheelhorse (1933-1941) Suspicious of His Load</a></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-theme-lp--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-theme-lp.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-theme-lp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-theme-lp field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Theme</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Economic history</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/15" hreflang="en">Governors and Senators</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-time-period-lp--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--node--field-time-period-lp.html.twig * field--node--lesson-plan.html.twig * field--field-time-period-lp.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-time-period-lp field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Time Period</div> <div class="field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5" hreflang="en">The World Remade, 1866–1902</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6" hreflang="en">Promise and Peril, 1903–1927</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7" hreflang="en">Bridging Hardship, 1928-1945</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap4/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:11:09 +0000 usnext 7106 at http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov