Reagan Launches General Election Campaign with 'States' Rights' Speech Near Civil Rights Murder Site

Ronald Reagan opened his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi—just seven miles from where Ku Klux Klan members had murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in 1964. In his first major speech after the Republican convention, Reagan declared: ‘I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level, and I believe we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment.’ The phrase ‘states’ rights’ had been the rallying cry for segregationists including Strom Thurmond (1948) and George Wallace (1968). Republican strategists deliberately chose this location to appeal to ‘George Wallace-inclined voters,’ according to a Mississippi GOP committee member. The New York Times headline read: ‘REAGAN CAMPAIGNS AT MISSISSIPPI FAIR; Nominee Tells Crowd of 10,000 He Is Backing States’ Rights.’ Columnist Bob Herbert later wrote: ‘Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair… Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, ‘I believe in states’ rights.’’ Reagan won Mississippi by 11,808 votes and went on to a landslide victory, cementing the Southern Strategy as Republican orthodoxy.