Dixie's Dirty Secret: How the Government, the Media, and the Mob Reshaped the Modern Republican Party Into the Image of the Old Confederacy

Inspired by Mississippi's stubborn refusal to ratify the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery until 2012, GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump opened campaign headquarters in Mississippi to learn how the state has "handled" its blacks. Was the idea to take the Mississippi Plan nationwide? In this book, learn how the state's white leadership, has blocked blacks from being elected to statewide offices for 138 years, how they have used the winner-take-all provision of the Electoral College to nullify black votes for president, and how through legal and social pressures they have created reservations for blacks similar to the ones created in another century for Native Americans. Mississippi has more black elected officials than any other state, but none of them are empowered to govern beyond their reservations.

Dixie's Dirty Secret exposes the longest running political gambit in American history and paints a frightful picture of the future of the United States if the current trend in politics continues. How did the populist Democratic Party lose its blue collar and Southern base? How did the elitist, stiff-upper-lip Republican Party become a vehicle for racism and right-wing political anarchy?

"Mississippians will recognize many names in this book, its governors, politicians and media figures. It's bound to spark outrage, and dispute, but more importantly, it should raise serious questions about the "white speak" that masquerades as political discourse both locally and nationally, and its effect on elections and public policy. While inferences and suppositions can be disputed, Dickerson's extensive research (the ample notes and references section is itself fascinating) provides facts beyond dispute."-Jim Ewing, Clarion-Ledger

At one time the Democratic Party was the political arm of the segregationist South and the Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln (as far as race relations were concerned). That all changed on a fateful day in 1960 when Democratic Party candidate John F. Kennedy telephoned Coretta King to offer his condolences that her husband Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested for parading without a permit. That telephone call set in motion a decades-long transformation of the Democratic Party into a liberal, pro-civil rights party and the transformation of the Republication Party into a right-wing, anti-civil rights party that embraced the social values of the Old Confederacy.

Also working against civil rights activists in the South were various organized crime cells, especially the Mafia godfather in New Orleans, and various right-wing media organizations that cared more about protecting the values of the Old Confederacy than in advancing democracy.

When Dixie's Dirty Secret was first published in 1998 it was the first book to expose the super-secret Mississippi Sovereignty Commission and the involvement of the government, the news media, and organized crime in combating the civil rights movement. This newly published edition, with nearly 20 years of new information, is a revised, greatly expanded analysis of that era.