Elections, State, State Legislature, 1967

This series of files arranged alphabetically by subject is the largest series in the manuscript collection; it contains correspondence, newsclippings, printed material, news releases, legal documents, and memoranda covering a variety of national, state, and local political and other public figures, events, and organizations. Additionally, a discrete portion of Series 5 dedicated to a collection of newsclippings from many of the towns and cities in Mississippi covering the years 1957 to 1986.

As President of th Mississippi AFL-CIO, Claude Ramsay had extensive contact with political leaders. Examples of such figures in this series are U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy; U.S. Congressmen William Colmer, Charles Griffin, Hubert H. Humphrey, Frank E. Smith, and John Bell Williams; and Mississippi Governors or Lieutenant-Governors Carroll Gartin, Paul Johnson, William Waller, William Winter, and Fielding Wright.

Series V contains a substantial number of folders on the National and Mississippi State Democratic Parties, 1956-1983, and has some material on the Loyal Democrats of Mississippi, 1963-1969, who sought to challenge the seating of the Regular Mississippi Delegation to the Party's National Convention in Chicago in 1968 because they believed that there was inadequate representation of blacks in the State Delegation; and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964-1968, a primarily black organization formed in 1964 to work for adequate representation of blacks in the national and Mississippi Democratic Parties; as well as one folder on the Mississippi Republican Party, 1973.

In addition to strictly political interests, Ramsay also created files on events as diverse as bombings in Laurel, Jackson, and Natchez in 1967-1968; the Cambodian Crisis, 1979-1980; a Mississippi Delta Farm Workers Strike in 1965; the Energy Crisis, 1973-1978; and shootings at Jackson State College in 1970.

There is a considerable amount of material on the Mississippi Legislature, 1958-1980, documenting regular, special, and extraordinary sessions. Material also exists on the Mississippi Democratic Conference, with Ramsay as co-chairman, which was formed in 1965 to support President Lyndon Johnson because most state Democrats failed to back the national ticket. Claude Ramsay similarly served as secretary in Mississippians Associated for Tax Equity (MATE), 1972-1982, a coalition of business, organized labor, and educators formed to make the State Tax Commission comply with the Constitution in equalizing tax assessments throughout the state.

Other organizations represented in Series 5 having Ramsay's membership were the L. Q. C. Lamar Society, 1970-1978, the Mississippi Council on Early Childhood Development, 1968- 1971, and the Mississippi Council on Economic Education, 1967-1978. Since Ramsay served on the Board of Directors for Systematic Training and Redevelopment (STAR), 1965-1971, a great deal of material exists on this non-profit corporation sponsored by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Natchez-Jackson and funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Office of Manpower, Automation and Training of the Department of Labor.

The sub-series of newsclippings is divided into two sections. The first consists of newsclippings gathered by the Mississippi State AFL-CIO from 1957 to 1986 from local Mississippi newspapers and a few major U.S. cities. The second section is a larger collection of articles created by the Magnolia Clipping Service covering the years 1982-1985, clipped from about forty newspapers in Mississippi. Most of the articles deal with civil rights, unemployment, and union activity in the state. Both sections are arranged chronologically.