The Day Old Dixie Died
Dan Rather's Steady essay celebrates Democrat Scott Colom's narrow Mississippi Senate win — by 5,686 votes over incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith — as a stunning turn in a history of voter suppression, from Jim Crow literacy tests to this year's purged voter rolls. It makes him the state's first Black U.S. senator since 1881 and first chosen by direct vote, and Rather credits Black women voters, 99% of whom backed him, while wondering how much wider the victory might have been.
