Thread by @KevinMKruse

Every now and then, a past project and a new one collide in the absolute coolest ways.

A short thread:

In my chapter on the Southern Strategy in MYTH AMERICA, there are a few appearances by the wonderfully named Wirt A. Yerger, Jr., who chaired the Mississippi GOP from 1956 to 1966, transforming it from a moderate and biracial party to one known as "lily white and hard right."

By the early 1960s, the Mississippi GOP was busy recruiting segregationist Democrats who were increasingly disaffected by the national party's embrace of civil rights.

Here's another excerpt from that chapter on the 1963 gubernatorial ticket.

Yerger soon made his mark on the national GOP.

When Robert Novak attended an RNC retreat in 1963, he found Yerger ranting that the Kennedys were deliberately causing civil rights protests to win votes. Novak left stunned, believing the GOP was becoming "a white man's party."

When Goldwater -- a proponent of the Southern Strategy & opponent of the Civil Rights Act -- won the party's nomination, the Mississippi GOP went further.

Its 1964 party platform asserted that "segregation of the races is absolutely essential to harmonious race relations."

Riding the anti-civil rights tide, Republicans took a stunning 87% of the vote in Mississippi and also elected the state's first GOP congressman since Reconstruction, another former segregationist Democrat named Prentiss Walker.

I've covered him here:

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1142979147553300480

The racial turmoil of 1964 was profitable for the Mississippi GOP.

But, of course, it was deadly for others -- most notably the civil rights activists Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, murdered by Klansmen that summer in the infamous "Mississippi Burning" case.

In my current book project, on John Doar and the Civil Rights Division, I'm covering the murder trial that arose out of that case, styled US v Price.

Luckily, Doar's Papers here at @muddlibrary have been incredibly rich, especially on this famous trial.

Tonight, I was looking through the CRD notes on all the potential jurors for US v Price.

Understandably, the Justice Department was eager to strike obvious racists from the jury pool, so several names have notes about Klan membership etc. next to them as a reasons to strike.

Anyway, I'm looking through the names and notes for a while, before coming across a very familiar name:

Wirt A. Yerger, Jr.

The notes read: "Mr. Republican. Not civil rights advocate."

Bit of an understatement there!

One last thing -- given how young he was then, I searched for news about Yerger and only then realized he passed away this year.

Here's the AP report. Would've been nice if they'd mentioned what his "vision" for the state GOP had been.

apnews.com/article/missis…