Mississippi: More Toward Moderation

Outside the Deep South, the trend among Republican candidates has been toward moderation on civil rights. Governors Spiro Agnew of Maryland and Winthrop Rockefeller of Arkansas won office even though their Democratic opponents "outsegged" them; in Virginia's 1965 gubernatorial race, moderate Republican Linwood Holton lost to Democrat Mills Godwin, a hardline white supremacist who shifted his stance to court Negro votes. Last week the move toward moderation manifested itself for the first time in that bastion of the white South, Mississippi.

Republican Rubel Phillips, 42, who ran unsuccessfully in 1 963 as a segregationist, opened his gubernatorial campaign by pleading for a truce in Mississippi's racial war. "Trying to keep something from happening has absorbed so much of our total energies for all these years that we haven't had much left to devote to the really important task of developing our state," declared Phillips. "It is painfully clear that the race issue has retarded the development of our human resources. The white cannot keep the Negro down without paying the awesome penalty of restricting his own development."

Before his shift, Phillips offered little opposition to Democratic Candidate John Bell Williams, 48, a racist Congressman who has pledged to deliver Mississippi's electoral votes to George Wallace. His new stance, Phillips hopes, could turn the trick in the Nov. 7 election by capturing the state's 185,000 Negro votes, along with those of whites eager for progress. Said one Mississippi Negro civil rights leader last week: "Don't be too surprised if we come out for Phillips."