Reagan’s states’ rights speech at the fair signaled racial retrenchment to Black Mississippians.

Evidence

Ronald Reagan came to the fair and said some words about “states’ rights.” Those words made a lot of white folks at the fair happy. Those words made Rae, Mama, Granny, and our whole church so scared we had to leave. When we got in the van, Rae told me that Ronald Reagan came to Mississippi to offer white folks an all-you-can-eat buffet of Black suffering. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1210

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the entire 1619 reframing argument: how coded political language (states’ rights) signals racial hierarchy and reads differently to white and Black audiences. — connects to: Reagan opened his 1980 campaign at the Mississippi Klan-murder site invoking states’ rights — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 150; The KKK grand wizard offered Reagan electoral support after his states’ rights speech — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 243