On March 30, 1961, the Sovereignty Commission, a Mississippi state agency, voted to continue funding pro-segregation campaigns organized by white citizens’ councils. Among the commission members were Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, Lt. Governor Paul B. Johnson, and the attorney general.

In the nine months leading up to the decision, the state commission invested the equivalent of over $600,000 today into pro-segregation campaigns broadcasted on national radio and television. The group helped finance over a dozen campaigns that aired in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Mississippi.

One of the campaigns characterized life for Black Mississippians as superior: “Negroes receive better treatment and more consideration of their welfare in Mississippi than any other state in the nation,” the campaign stated.

In reality, racial terror violence and extreme opposition to equal rights for Black people were widespread in Mississippi. Mississippi was among the first Southern states to adopt a new state constitution in the 1890s designed to disenfranchise Black citizens, which succeeded in excluding Black Mississippians from political participation and power for decades.

Mississippi continued to symbolically resist racial equality throughout the 20th century; the state did not formally ratify the Thirteenth Amendment—which prohibited slavery except as punishment for crime—until 1995.

To learn more about Mississippi’s commitment to maintaining racial segregation—along with that of millions of Americans—read EJI’s report, Segregation in America.