When the Mississippi Republican Party met in July 1869 to consider its new platform, it was one of the first political party conventions in American history in which African Americans played a significant role as policy makers and delegates. The convention came up with a platform that eschewed talk of revenge or racial superiority, but which focused on principles of equality without regard to color.
Source: The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction By Edward McPherson
Plank Number 4 deserves some mention. In the year prior to its adoption, Ku Klux Klan terrorism had become widespread in Mississippi. Attacks on blacks trying to organize in their communites had turned deadly. Violence had been used across the state to suppress the votes of newly enfranchised African Americans.
Plank 5 demands the creation of a system of public schools. Schooling for freedpeople had been provided by the Freedmen’s Bureau, but the Bureau had begun shutting down its operations in the Fall of 1868. African Americans recognized that their children’s chance for an education might soon be gone unless public schools were established.
Mississippi before the Civil War had one of the lowest rates of foreign immigration of any state in the Union. The Republican platform’s 13th Plank strongly encouraged immigration, but insisted that immigrants be welcomed regardless of race or religion.
