function. Schemes to reduce the size of the Black population became a popular subject of discussion. The Great Migration during World War I had generated near-panic among wealthier whites. Labor agents from the North were shot at, beaten, harassed with every legal device planters could think of. Blacks caught trying to leave might be jailed or even strung up as a lesson to others. By the 1950s, gubernatorial candidates were competing to see who could promise to drive the greatest number of Negroes from the state in the shortest period of time.
