In 1967, at the behest of Marian Wright, then a Mississippi civil rights attorney, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the delegation of the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Employment Manpower and Poverty, traveled to the Mississippi Delta where they saw firsthand the extent of the hunger and malnutrition that the poor in Mississippi endured. Clark and Kennedy visited several towns and cities in the Delta and met with local leaders, civil rights activists, and residents. They also witnessed firsthand the poverty, lack of educational opportunities, and poor housing conditions that many Mississippians were facing. Up to this point, poverty and starvation in Mississippi was virtually “undiscovered” and silenced by the political strategies of the Mississippi congressional white power structure. Kennedy’s tour of the Mississippi Delta was widely covered by the media and brought national attention to the plight of the area’s residents.

After visiting starving families in the Mississippi Delta, the delegation returned to Washington to demand emergency federal aid and a cut in food stamp prices. President Johnson refused to support the needed spending, and Southern legislators adamantly opposed anything that smacked of welfare, especially for their poor Black constituents. “When you start giving people something for nothing… I wonder you don’t destroy character more than you might improve nutrition,” Mississippi Congressman Jamie Whitten said at one hearing. Mississippi politicians’ power prevailed throughout the late 1960s into the 1970s, and Mississippi remained absent from any government-based intervention plans. The Mississippi political machine’s ability to control local, national, and state politics ultimately contributed to the failure of the War on Poverty in the Delta.

According to the latest data, for the past eight years, Mississippi has been the hungriest state in the country. Currently, there are 600,000 people, 20% of the population, in the state that are considered to be food insecure, including 1 in 4 children.

In the display case:

• "Going Hungry in America: Government's Failure" by Elizabeth B. Drew in The Atlantic (December 1968), p. 53-61.

• The Geographic Distribution of Hunger in the United States

Bottom left photo: Congressional delegation including Jamie Whitten (R-MS, seated far right); Top right photo: Senator Robert F. Kennedy stands at the podium on stage at the Tad Smith Coliseum at the University of Mississippi on March 18, 1966.