Mississippi's War Against the War on Poverty: Food Power, Hunger, and White Supremacy

Authors

Bobby J. Smith II, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Files

Description

To ensure that the “militant agitators” did not take control of “industry, agriculture, and even labor,” a group of three powerful Mississippi congressmen—Jamie Whitten, Sen. John Stennis, and Sen. James Eastland—ignited a war against the War on Poverty. As part of President Johnson’s Great Society campaign of 1964, the War on Poverty promised to address and eradicate hunger throughout the nation by making it the “urgent business of all men and women of every race and every religion and every region.” However, in a place like Mississippi, specifically the Delta and plantation counties, the eradication of hunger through antipoverty programs threatened the politics of white supremacy. Local, state, and national actors in Mississippi used “food power”—the use of food as a weapon or an element of power—to maintain white supremacy and undermine the civil rights movement.

Publication Date

7-1-2019

Relational Format

journal article

Comments

Includes embedded videos for:

• Counter Histories, Jackson, Mississippi. Courtesy the Southern Foodways Alliance.
• A 1966 television campaign commercial in which Sen. James O. Eastland touts his record on civil rights. (James O. Eastland Collection, Archives and Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, The University of Mississippi [eastland_2_quad_5])
• Head Start to Confidence [17 min.], a Project Head Start training film produced by the Office of Economic Opportunity by the Department of Psychology, Vassar College.
• President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” Speech (LBJ Presidential Library)

Recommended Citation

Smith, Bobby J. II, "Mississippi's War Against the War on Poverty: Food Power, Hunger, and White Supremacy" (2019). Study the South. 11.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/studythesouth/11

Accessibility Status

Searchable text