Mississippi criminalized advocating racial equality in speech as late as 1921.

Evidence

Vagrancy wasn’t the only crime that ensnared black people. Mississippi, in 1921, made “social equality” a crime, punishable by fines up to $500 and prison time “not exceeding six months” at the court’s discretion. The law provided that: “any person, firm or corporation who shall be guilty of printing, publishing, or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter urging or presenting for public acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality…between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 284

Vagrancy wasn’t the only crime that ensnared black people. Mississippi, in 1921, made “social equality” a crime, punishable by fines up to $500 and prison time “not exceeding six months” at the court’s discretion. The law provided that: “any person, firm or corporation who shall be guilty of printing, publishing, or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter urging or presenting for public acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality…between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 284

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Brown’s earlier Whiteness of Wealth diagnosis of how law encodes racial hierarchy in everyday life. — connects to: Advocating racial equality was criminalized as sedition against US white supremacy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 246
• CANDY: That ‘social equality’ itself was a statutory crime in Mississippi until relatively recently is a striking one-line fact usable in conversation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 284