Preclearance was a necessary step to remedy southern defiance when it came to voting rights, she said. "State sovereignty and states' rights were phrases often used to mark resistance to civil-rights advancements in terms of federal legislation." "The use of the word 'sovereignty' certainly would have been a code word for white supremacy in the 1950s or 1960s," she said. Stephanie Rolph, a Millsaps historian who focuses on the South's history of segregation and its opposition to civil rights, told the Jackson Free Press on Friday that Baker's comments hearkened back to the era she studies. Hood, who is a Democratic candidate for governor, did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon. The Daily Journal's Caleb Bedillion first reported Baker's comments on Thursday. "We used to pass bills in the Legislature, and although they were law once the government signed them, they were not effective until some nameless, faceless, party apparatchik on the third floor of the Department of Justice signed off on it,” Baker said Monday. When it passed the act in 1965, Congress singled out those states because of their notorious history of denying African Americans the right to vote. Department of Justice had to approve any changes to voting laws in certain southern states like Mississippi. "Our attorney general decided that the federal government's thumb on our elections was important in this day and time." Your sovereignty is of no value at the federal level,'" Baker, who represents Brandon in the state House, said. "With preclearance, Mississippi and a few other southern states were put in a group and (told), 'You cannot manage your own elections. The voting law that became a major turning point in black Americans' struggle for equal rights and political power is now outdated, the Supreme Court says. A Look at 48 Years of the Voting Rights Act
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