Despite her being appointed in April, it’s seems that it’s just now that the depth of Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s racism is finally coming to light—and it goes all the way back to high school. First she essentially ignored the disgust aimed her way after making an obscure and outdated lynching “joke”; then came the outrage over her embrace of attempts to suppress the vote of liberal college students. Next came the discovery of a Facebook post from 2014, featuring Hyde-Smith rocking Confederate Army headwear, while visiting the “Presidential Library” of Jefferson Davis.
Refusing to apologize for any of it at first, the Republican who loves Trump seems to be in ever-more peril in these final days before her runoff election against Democrat Mike Espy, who just happens to be black. Hyde-Smith finally offered a non-apology during the candidates’ debate on Tuesday.
“For anyone that was offended by my comments, I certainly apologize,” Hyde-Smith said during a debate with Espy in Jackson, Mississippi.
“There was no ill will, no intent whatsoever in my statement,” she said. “This comment was twisted and it was turned into a weapon to use against me, a political weapon used for nothing but personal and political gain by my opponent.”
Her opponent, of course, nipped that nonsense right in the bud.
Espy said her statement was “a black eye” for the state and had resurrected old stereotypes about Mississippi.
“No one twisted your comments because the comments came out of your mouth,” Espy told Hyde-Smith. “I don’t know what’s in your heart, but we all know what came out of your mouth.”
It’s also been revealed that Hyde-Smith has accepted thousands in campaign contributions from white supremacist donors, including one who went to prison for literally trying to overthrow a country.
Meanwhile, major corporate donors continue to separate themselves from a politician who not only seems mighty racist, but also is unapologetic about it. Espy’s campaign has seized on the embarrassment Hyde-Smith brings to the Hospitality State. Mississippi already has a pretty bad rap when it comes to Southern stereotypes of lingering racism, and consistently takes a spot at or near the bottom when rankings for education and income are done across the United States; these traits make it an unappealing home for businesses and the young earners that might work there.
Espy’s latest campaign ad capitalizes on that reality, asking “How embarrassing is Cindy Hyde-Smith?”
Thing is, Hyde-Smith just got a whole lot more embarrassing, now that it’s been learned that she attended a segregation academy as a child. Published late Friday night, an explosive and well-written must-read piece in the Jackson Press reveals the reason that Hyde-Smith, who, despite being a proud Mississippi native, has taken great pains to hide her K-12 education in all of her biographies.
U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith attended and graduated from a segregation academy that was set up so that white parents could avoid having to send their children to schools with black students, a yearbook reveals.
The yearbook was leaked to the Free Press by a classmate who “knew of her” but had no relationship with her. The student asserts that she knew exactly why she was enrolled at Lawrence, which has since closed; others assert that Hyde-Smith would have known, too.
Former Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Rickey Cole … said Hyde-Smith would have known why she was at a school like Lawrence County Academy.
“When the public schools in Mississippi were ordered desegregated, many thousands of white families cobbled together what they could laughingly call a school to send their children to for no other reason except they didn’t want them to be around n-words or to be treated or behave as equal to black people,” Cole said.
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“The only reason people of my generation and Cindy’s generation went to segregation academies was to keep the white kids and the black kids apart,” said Cole, who added that he is about six or seven years younger than Hyde-Smith.
The student who provided the Jackson Free Press with the yearbook said she realized her parents had sent her to Lawrence County Academy to keep her from going to school with black students sometime while she was still a student.
“That was just between the family, and we found out when we were old enough to question it,” the student said. “That’s how our parents felt.”
And before anyone gives her a pass for that by asserting it was Hyde-Smith’s parents who shaped her education, consider where the unelected senator chose to educate her child.
Lawrence County Academy opened in the small town of Monticello, Miss., about 60 miles south of Jackson, in 1970. That same year, another segregation school, Brookhaven Academy, opened in nearby Lincoln County. Years later, Hyde-Smith would send her daughter, Anna-Michael, to that academy.
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Even to this day, Brookhaven Academy, from which Hyde-Smith’s daughter graduated in 2017, is almost all-white. In the 2015-2016 school year, Brookhaven Academy enrolled 386 white children, five Asian children, and just one black child, the National Center for Education Statistics shows.
Again, it’s worth noting that Hyde-Smith has been meticulous in keeping her high school alma mater out of the history she shares with the public. Her pal Governor Phil Bryant, a fan of the Confederacy who appointed Hyde-Smith to finish out retiring Republican Thad Cochran’s term, has a similarly racist educational past, and has taken similar pains to cover it up, the Free Press reports.
While Hyde-Smith regularly touts her subsequent education at Copiah-Lincoln Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi, her high school has been conspicuously absent from the senator’s official statements, speeches and public biographies. Even her Facebook account suggests her education began with community college.
In that reticence about her high-school years, Hyde-Smith is like the man who appointed her to the U.S. Senate seat, Gov. Phil Bryant, who attended one of the Citizens Council academies set up around Jackson by the virulently racist organization for white families fleeing newly integrated schools.
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Bryant also does not publicize that he attended Council McCluer School in south Jackson, which a local historian confirmed through yearbooks for a column in the Jackson Free Press last year.
The Hyde-Smith campaign has yet to comment on the new revelations; however, since it took weeks for her to non-apologize for her vile “public hanging” comments, it’s not likely she’ll have much to say anytime soon, if ever.
The real question remains: Who will Mississippi voters elect on Tuesday? A continuously blatant bigot and MAGAbot who feeds the backwater stereotypes of their struggling state, or someone determined to change Mississippi’s reputation (and realities) for the better? Polls still have the racist in the lead, but you can help change that.
Sign up for the Mike Espy runoff call team here, or the Mike Espy Hustle runoff text team here.