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[[bold]]POLITICAL POWER[[bold]]
[[bold]]GUYOT & THELWELL[[bold]]

ceived routine communications from the Congressman from their district. Governor Johnson, as early as last January, began calling for a new image of "moderation." He publicly appealed to "all elements in state" to refrain from violence, then added the realistic if transparent qualification, "at least for the next six months." He also refrained from calling the usual spring session of the legislature. This was explained by the Jackson press as being caused by a fear of the possible effect on the challenge that a rash of racist and inflammatory legislation, such as was produced by the 1964 session, might have.

When the legislature was called into session in June, it was for the purpose of ratifying a series of "liberalizing" amendments to the state's voting laws. The good faith of this move was somewhat tarnished by the arrest of some 1,400 demonstrators in Jackson while the legislature was in session. Also, one proponent of the changes in the voting laws, State Senator William Pittman from Hattiesburg, in campaigning for the revision assured the white electorate that the state had received assurance from the Johnson administration to the effect that if they revised the voting requirements only a token number of federal registrars would be sent to Mississippi under the Voting Rights bill. It is possible that he might have invented or exaggerated the commitment give in Washington but it is a fact that there are at present a scant 19 federal registrars in the state. This token implementation of the new legislation is particularly ironic since one of the major arguments advanced for not unseating the Mississippi congressmen by the liberal establishment, in and out of Congress, was the notion that the new law would consign Negro disfranchisement to the dust bin of history.

Thus the need for effective political action, coupled with the total exclusion of the black population from political involvement in Mississippi Congressmen by the liberal establishment, in and out of Con two years of formal existence. Neither "challenge" succeeded in changing any of the basic power relationships between the racist state structure in Mississippi and the national structure. But, if nothing else was accomplished, a clear picture of the nature of political power in the nation and Mississippi's relationship to that power complex has emerged.

[[bold italics]]hypocrisy of state efforts[[bold italics]]

Without abandoning the concept of the "challenge" in the future, we

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