Reagan Launches General Election Campaign with "States' Rights" Speech Near Site of Civil Rights Murders

Ronald Reagan opens his 1980 general election campaign on August 3, 1980 at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi — a location chosen deliberately by campaign aides to signal to George Wallace-aligned Southern voters. A 1979 Republican official letter explicitly calls for the eventual nominee to appear at venues likely to draw "George Wallace-inclined voters." Philadelphia, Mississippi is the town where Ku Klux Klan members murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in 1964. Reagan's address centers on the phrase "I believe in states' rights," the same language invoked by segregationist authorities during the murders. Civil rights leader Andrew Young writes in the Washington Post days later that "states' rights" at such a forum means only one thing to Southern Black Americans. Reagan had also campaigned in 1976 on the "welfare queen" trope — a Black woman allegedly defrauding the government — a racially coded message repeated throughout his political career.