The state’s regime partnered robbery of the franchise with robbery of the purse. “You do it the night before the election.” “You and I know what’s the best way to keep the nigger from voting,” blustered Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and a proud Klansman.
Between 18, more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state. The majority of the people in the state were perpetually robbed of the vote-a hijacking engineered through the trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob. In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy. When he first tried to get a legitimate mortgage, he was denied mortgages were effectively not available to black people. Clyde Ross, photographed in November 2013 in his home in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, where he has lived for more than 50 years.
