In 1874 the Mississippi state legislature had sixty-four Black elected officials. A Black man, Thomas Cardozo, was chosen to be superintendent of education. The next time the state went to the polls, which would signal the practical end of Reconstruction, the election was won at gunpoint. The Klan patrolled the registration places and the voting precincts. Baring Brothers in London closely followed the campaigns via its New Orleans partners. The newly elected white representatives and their supporters had a name for this new era of Mississippi history: the Redemption.
