A Mississippi View of Race Relations in the South

The author presents a Southern viewpoint on postwar race relations, tracing antebellum cultural pride, wartime devastation, and the upheaval of Reconstruction. He contends that emancipation and the extension of suffrage to Black people produced harmful political and social consequences and assigns much blame to opportunistic outside actors who influenced the freed population. The text emphasizes persistent personal bonds between former owners and the formerly enslaved, criticizes aspects of Reconstruction policy, and calls for sympathetic, locally guided, pragmatic solutions to the region's political, social, and economic problems.