Book excerpt: In this ambitious reassessment of racial politics in the deep South, Joseph Crespino reveals how Mississippi leadrs strategically accommodated themselves to the demands of civil rights activists and the federal government seeking to end Jim Crow, and in so doing contributed to a vibrant conservative countermovement. Crespino reveals important divisions among Mississippi whites, offering the most nuanced portrayal yet of how conservative southerners bridged the gap between the politics of Jim Crow and that of the modern Republican South.