Mississippi in this time period was a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. The Republican Party was virtually nonexistent as a result of disenfranchisement among poor whites and African Americans,[2] including voter intimidation against those who refused to vote Democratic. The state Republican Party led by Perry Wilbon Howard II — who resided in Washington D.C. after 1928 — was entirely drawn from the state’s tiny black middle class and never contested non-presidential elections,[3] serving entirely to sell federal patronage,[4] mostly to white Democrats.[5] The 1948 election split the National Democratic Party and segregationist Southern Democrats over the issue of civil rights for African Americans.[6] In the 1952 election, Stevenson, a moderate on race issues, selected the segregationist Senator Sparkman as his running mate to avoid another split in the Democratic vote. However, this was not enough for some white Mississippians, who felt that the national Republican Party already offered a better prospect for their conservative social and economic goals.[3]
^"U.S. presidential election, 1952". Facts on File. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved October 24, 2013. Eisenhower, born in Texas, considered a resident of New York, and headquartered at the time in Paris, finally decided to run for the Republican nomination
^Wright-Austin, Sharon D. (2006). The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta. SUNY Press. p. 45. ISBN9780791468012.
^ abBusbee, Westley F. (2014). Mississippi: A History. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 276–278. ISBN9781118822722.
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