Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

in the Age of Jim C,Eow, states that nearly 600 Mississippians of African descent
were lynched between 1880 and 1940. With the terror of lynch law and the denial
of Black voter registration, which eliminated Blacks from participation on juries,
no Mississippi white was ever convicted for the murder of a Black person . To
maintain white supremacy in Mississippi it was necessary to eliminate Blacks as
political competitors . Mississippi has historically possessed one of the highest
Black populations in the United States with the he western part of the state having
the highest Black concentration . The Delta region in the north and central western
sections of the state became an agricultural center based on cotton and Black
sharecropping after Reconstruction . In the Delta, political and economic repres-
sion, and white supremacist violence was utilized to keep Blacks powerless . Other
areas of the state also had high Black concentrations . Other historical Black
concentration centers include the southwest (Mississippi) river lowlands ; the
Loess Hills region, running from the southwestern counties of the state north to
the Tennessee border; and Black Prairie Flatwoods, which extends from the
central Alabama Black Belt north through the north central portion of Mississippi .
All of these regions developed as agricultural hubs based on captive African labor
during the antebellum period. After emancipation these regions remained eco-
nomically dependent on Black labor through agrarian peonage . Due to their high
Black concentrations, violence was also necessary to maintain white supremacy in
these regions, as in the Delta .'
The end of World War H was a period that Black people throughout the
South saw as a time to intensify the struggle to achieve political and citizenship
rights. After Reconstruction, one necessary pillar in maintaining white political