Mississippi: Pledges of Love and Unity

Fayette, Miss., a racially mixed community of 1,700, pays its mayor $75 a month and had allowed one white man to enjoy the sweets of office for 18 years. R. J. Allen, 74, might have remained in power until nature took its inevitable course. Like blacks elsewhere in the state, however, Fayette's Negro majority yearned to translate their votes into political power. Last week, in a Democratic primary contest that was tantamount to election, they made Civil Rights Leader Charles Evers the first black mayor of a Mississippi town since Reconstruction.

Evers,...

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