Races: Not Doing You Like You Done Us

Among his first official acts, the new mayor of Fayette, Miss., repealed the Delta town's segregationist ordinances. Mayor Charles Evers, 46, the first black mayor of a racially mixed Mississippi town since Reconstruction, had no trouble getting the bill through the town council. All five of its members are black, voted into office on Evers' coattails.

Fulfilling his campaign promise of a biracial government, Evers searched for whites to help fill a few vacant positions. Every white official save the fire chief had quit rather than serve under a black administration, though Evers was able to enlist a white...

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