Epilogue

Amid 20th-century global decolonization movements, Black and white organizers in the Lower Mississippi Valley challenged the economic exploitation and voter suppression of Jim Crow. In the early 1960s organizers with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) supported West Feliciana sweet potato farmers who organized against a canning company whom they accused of using contracts to intimidate Black voters, and in October Rev. Joe Carter became the first Black person to register to vote in West Feliciana since 1902. Yet the reaction was swift, culminating in David Duke’s gubernatorial campaign in the early 1990s. The linear passage of time does not guarantee progress; but if the forces of reaction are nimble, so are we. And there is joy to be found in that simple truth.