In Mississippi, a historic election is still taking place. The state is one of ten states with a rule that mandates a candidate to receive at least 50 percent of the votes or face the second-place opponent in a runoff. Candidates for Senate Mike Espy and Cindy Hyde-Smith will face each other in a runoff later in November after neither received the required number of votes to take the win.
"If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row"- Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith says in Tupelo, MS after Colin Hutchinson, cattle rancher, praises her.
Hyde-Smith is in a runoff on Nov 27th against Mike Espy. pic.twitter.com/0a9jOEjokr
— Lamar White, Jr. (@LamarWhiteJr) November 11, 2018
At a speaking event on Sunday, Hyde-Smith made statements regarding Colin Hutchinson, who had just finished singing her praises. In order to return the compliment, Hyde-Smith told the crowd “if he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”
The crowd cheered, but the comments did not go over well with anyone else. Hyde-Smith’s challenger is a black man in Mississippi, a state with a long history of brutal and deadly racism, including lynchings.
To understand the inherent racism that is rooted in Hyde-Smith’s comment, it’s important to have an understanding of Mississippi history. According to the NAACP:
‘From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched. These numbers seem large, but it is known that not all of the lynchings were ever recorded. Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched. That is only 27.3%. Many of the whites lynched were lynched for helping the black or being anti lynching and even for domestic crimes…
‘Most of the lynchings that took place happened in the South. A big reason for this was the end of the Civil War. Once black were given their freedom, many people felt that the freed blacks were getting away with too much freedom and felt they needed to be controlled. Mississippi had the highest lynchings from 1882-1968 with 581. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. 79% of lynching happened in the South.’
Twitter promptly and appropriately lost their minds. Read some of their comments below:
Featured image via Twitter video
