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Tool of a Tool. The Ku Klux Klan, in a desperate attempt to block popular ratification, vilified the Governor in language that, in his words, "would make a back-alley degenerate ashamed of himself." The Klan even accused the Governor of being a Communist, on the convoluted theory that the Communists had made a tool of President Johnson, who had made a tool of Mississippi's Senator James Eastland, who had made a tool of the Governor. Also battling the amendment was the Association of Christian Conservatives ("neither Christian nor conservative," charges Johnson), composed of leaders of the state's John Birch Society, Citizens' Council, Women for Constitutional Government, and Americans for the Preservation of the White Race. On the eve of the referendum, however, the state's two U.S. Senators, Eastland and John Stennis, segregationists both, came out in favor of the measure, declaring that "such changes will place our state and county officials in a better position to minimize federal control of the registration of voters and elections."
The new law will not of itself exempt Mississippi from federal intervention under the Voting Rights Act. The state has yet to persuade the Attorney General or the U.S. District Court in Washington that it no longer practices voter discrimination, and registrars in many Mississippi counties are plainly paying little, if any, attention to the new state and federal laws (see previous story). Yet Governor Johnson says that he is confident that Mississippians "will try to comply with the new law as far as reasonable." And in any event, he firmly believes that the new Negro vote may have a decisive effect on the next gubernatorial campaign in 1967−in which Johnson's predecessor, Segregationist Ross Barnett, reportedly hopes to make a comeback.