Bill Minor, long-time Mississippi reporter, recalls the last days of Richard Nixon back in 1974: Mississippi was loyal to Nixon until the inglorious end Sun-Herald (MS) 08/19/04.
Minor tells about going to see then-Vice President Gerald Ford speak in Mississippi, just a few days before Nixon finally resigned from office in disgrace over the Watergate scandals:
It amazed me that only about 300 Mississippians showed up to hear Ford, even though anyone closely following the unfolding Watergate case building against Nixon should have realized that here was an opportunity to see and hear the man who would likely soon become president.
When I conveyed my feelings to some unbelievers that day, I quickly grasped that a great many Mississippians were either not keeping up with the Watergate scandal, or chose to believe Nixon would simply ride it out.
Just two months earlier, even as evidence against Nixon mounted in Senate hearings, he was welcomed by a cheering crowd of several thousand when he addressed the Mississippi Economic Council in the Mississippi Coliseum.
That was an apparent clue that Mississippians were blind to the seriousness of allegations that the White House was involved in the 1972 break-in of the National Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate complex.
In the 1972 election, Nixon got 505,000 votes in Mississippi to only 127,000 for Democratic nominee George McGovern, even though the Watergate break-in had begun to smell.
Well, not exactly all Mississippians were blind to the seriousness of Watergate. I can tell you on good authority that there was a protest against Nixon at that last appearance of his as president in Mississippi.
I even have pictures. If I could ever figure out how to use my scanner and the home page setup to display the photos right here on the blog, I would post one or two of them. I've got to get myself into the digital photography age.
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