Alvin Jackson, president of the NAACP chapter at Tougaloo College, led a call-and-response outside Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s downtown Jackson office during a noon protest Friday, Nov. 16, 2018.
“No hate!” Jackson yelled.
“In our state!” the crowd shouted back.
Jackson told the Jackson Free Press that people on campus are upset, energized and in disbelief, but energized following her viral “public hanging” comment and recently surfaced video of the senator laughing as she chatted about imposing voter suppression on “liberal folks” in some Mississippi colleges. Some of the 30 or so people at the protest called for the senator’s resignation, shouting “Hell no, Cindy gotta go,” which also appeared on signs.
“A lot of the students who aren’t from Mississippi, from out north or out west, they’re like, ‘Really? Your public officials would say something like that?’ So they’re energized,” Jackson said. “People in Mississippi are energized because I believe they believe enough is enough.”
Many protesters hailed from Tougaloo College, a private, historically black institution with a long legacy of civil- rights activism, while others turned out from local high schools.
