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In 1890 a state constitutional convention was called in Mississippi. The chief, though not only, motive for it was the disfranchisement of the remaining African American voters in the state. Actuallly, the task of disfranchisement had already largely been accomplished, as was shown by the fact that only one of the delegates to the convention was black; but the danger that the Lodge bill for federal supervision of elections might pass Congress led to a desire to disfranchise blacks "legally" rather than just by force. Besides, in some of the black counties, some blacks did vote in local elections and were allowed to hold some minor offices under "fusion" arranagements with local whites.

The convention gave disfranchisment a legal basis through various means such as a poll tax, residency requirements (since blacks were more likely to have moved recently), and the notorious requirement that every voter must be able to read any section of the state constitution, or "be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof." "There was a 'general understanding' that any white illiterate would be passed by the registrars while no Negro would be.' Albert D. Kirwan, *Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi Politics, 1876-1925*, p. 69. https://books.google.com/books?id=65ofBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA69 The disfranchisement was a quick success, at least in state-wide elections (though some river counties maintained their fusion systems and continued to send a few African Americans to the state legislature until the end of the century). As late as 1884, Blaine had gotten over 43,000 votes in Mississippi; in 1892 Harrison got fewer than 1,500.

However, disfranchisement was not the only purpose of the convention. Reapportionment was another. The white counties were upset that the black counties--which of course had far fewer voters--had a majority in the state legislature. In addition to arguing that this gave unfair power to the Delta planter against the hill country yeoman farmer, they argued that it was a potential menace to white supremacy: What if the federal courts declared Mississippi's disfranchisement clauses unconstitutional and Congress passed the Lodge bill? The legislature must be reapportioned so that *even if* blacks were allowed to vote, they could never control it. The white counties did not get all they wanted, but the number of representatives in the legislature was increased by thirteen, the increase being all allotted to the white counties. In addition, several legislative districts were carved out of white sections of black counties.

The overwhelming majority of the delegates of black counties at the convention opposed the reapportionment plan, but a few supported it-- including the convention's only African American, Isaiah T. Montgomery of Bolivar County. (See http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/55/isaiah-t-montgomery-1847-1924-part-I and http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/55/index.php?id=57 for Montgomery's quite interesting life story.) Together with the white county delegates, they were enough to enable the plan to pass. As it turned out, the black counties would still have a majority under the new apportionment, though a smaller one than before. This, however, was not obvious at the time. The plan was bitterly attacked by the press of the black counties, which argued that the fear of Negro domination was a "phantasm" and that it had in fact been the black counties that had been most faithful to the Democratic Party as the guardian of "white rule," while many of the white counties had supported Independent movements. Indeed, according to Kirwan (p. 80):

"So great was the opposition to the scheme in the Delta that there was actually talk of secession from the state. A supplemental report of the legislative committee of the convention provided that 'the Legislature may consent to the creation of another State or territory...out of a portion of this State whenever the consent of the Congress of the United States may be given thereto.' [1] But this clause was stricken out by the Convention." https://books.google.com/books?id=65ofBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA80

POD: The clause is not stricken out, and the Delta decides to secede, the white counties (or enough of them to get a legislative majority for consent) saying "good riddance." In 1893 there is a Democratic President (Grover Cleveland) and a Democratic Congress happy to have another Democratic state. So Deltaland (let's call it that--or maybe the "State of Yazoo") becomes a state. Of course for decades it elects only whites to federal, state, and (except in a few all-black towns) local offices. But then in 1965 comes the Voting Rights Act (I assume it's not butterflied away). So we get the first black *voting* majority state since Reconstruction... (Although the Great Migration to the North left Mississippi as a whole with a white majority after World War II, the Delta continued to be majority-black, though not as overwhelmingly as in the 1890's. It forms the core of the Mississippi Second Congressional District, which has elected African Americans to Congress since 1986. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi's_2nd_congressional_district There is one complication, though--the new state will probably include DeSoto County, which in the 1890's was just another rural, heavily African American county, but which in recent decades has become a mostly-white county of Memphis suburbanites. This might eventually erode the Delta state's black majority. But of course Memphis-area whites might be more reluctant to move to a black-majority state.)

[1] *Journal of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Missisisippi,* p. 442. http://books.google.com/books?id=hr4GAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA442

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