War on Poverty in Mississippi

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty instigated a ferocious backlash in Mississippi. Federally funded programs—the embodiment of 1960s liberalism—directly clashed with Mississippi’s closed society. From 1965 to 1973, opposing forces transformed the state.

In this state-level history of the war on poverty, Emma J. Folwell traces the attempts of white and black Mississippians to address the ...