Delta Pearl
| 👩🏿 | |
| Era | The Fifties |
|---|---|
| Age | 42-50 |
| Home | Mississippi Delta |
| Demographic | Black, Southern, Jim Crow |
| Lean | civil_rights |
| Race | black |
Pearl is a domestic worker in a plantation town in the Mississippi Delta and a senior woman in her church. She represents the majority of Black Southerners who cannot vote for president, but whose treatment the rest of the country still watches.
Who they stand for
Pearl stands for most Black Americans in 1950, who still lived in the South, and particularly for Black Mississippians, almost none of whom could vote. The Supreme Court struck down the all-white primary in the 1944 case Smith v. Allwright, but the poll tax, the literacy test, the understanding clause in Mississippi's 1890 constitution, and the local sheriff's discretion all remained, and by 1960 only one Black adult in twenty was registered to vote. The mechanical cotton picker was emptying the Delta's plantations and sending Black workers north to cities such as Chicago, which is why South Side Marcus votes and Pearl does not. The White Citizens' Council movement was founded in Indianola, in the Delta, the summer after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The Reverend George Lee was shot and killed in Belzoni in 1955 for registering Black voters, and Emmett Till was murdered in Money, Mississippi, that same August. The decade's federal actions on civil rights included Truman's desegregation of the armed forces, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 with its voting-rights lawsuits, and federal troops sent to Little Rock. Any work Pearl does for the NAACP carries real personal risk.
Playing to them
Pearl cannot vote for a president, but she judges one by what actually reaches Mississippi. This includes a Justice Department that sues local voter registrars, federal protection for Black citizens who try to register, a civil rights bill with real enforcement power, and a president who names specific events in the Delta rather than issuing general statements deploring violence. A president's silence after a lynching costs him more of her respect than any single policy failure, and so does deference to the doctrine of states' rights, which in practice means deference to the local sheriff. She is a churchwoman above all, so a president who mocks religion or Black preachers also loses her respect, and a president who treats the NAACP as a Communist organisation has effectively sided with the White Citizens' Councils. Small gestures of respect move her more than a player might expect.
Everything that wins Pearl's support loses Dixiecrat Dale and Minute Women Vivian outright, and strains Cannery Carl, GI-Bill Buddy and Suburban Sue, who accept the principle behind civil rights but are uneasy about its enforcement. The same actions also win South Side Marcus, Barrio Tomás and Garment Row Saul.
Where they live
The five states where Delta Pearl makes up the largest share of the electorate in the fifties:
- Mississippi
- Alabama
- South Carolina
- Georgia
- Louisiana