To succeed in Mississippi politics since Reconstruction has meant being a segregationist, and James P. Coleman succeeded. "Those who propose to mix the races in our public schools might as well try to dip the Atlantic dry with a teaspoon," he said as Governor in 1956, two years after the Supreme Court school integration ruling. And, as he had promised he would, he signed laws aimed at thwarting that decision.
But Coleman was never a militant racist. He stayed clear of the Citizens Councils, scoffed at the notion of state "nullification" of federal...
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