In a state with a history of racially motivated lynchings, Mississippi senator joked about ‘public hanging’

Reporting from Jackson, Miss. —  A newly published video shows a Republican U.S. senator in Mississippi praising someone by saying: “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is white, said Sunday that her Nov. 2 remark was an “exaggerated expression of regard” for someone who invited her to speak and “any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous.”

Mississippi has a history of racially motivated lynchings of black people. The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People website says that between 1882 and 1968, Mississippi had 581 lynchings, the highest number of any state.

Hyde-Smith faces a Democratic challenger, former Rep. Mike Espy, in a Nov. 27 runoff. Espy, who is black, is also a former U.S. agriculture secretary.

“Cindy Hyde-Smith’s comments are reprehensible,” Espy campaign spokesman Danny Blanton said in a statement Sunday. “They have no place in our political discourse, in Mississippi, or our country.”

The video was shot in Tupelo, in front of a statue of Elvis Presley, and shows a small group of white people clapping politely for Hyde-Smith after a cattle rancher introduced her.

“I referred to accepting an invitation to a speaking engagement,” Hyde-Smith, who is also a cattle rancher, said in a statement Sunday. “In referencing the one who invited me, I used an exaggerated expression of regard, and any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous.”

Mike Espy, who is headed for a runoff with Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, stands with family members on election night.

(Rogelio V. Solis / Associated Press)

Hyde-Smith and Espy each received about 41% of the vote in a four-person race Tuesday to advance to the runoff. The winner gets the final two years of a term started by longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran.

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Hyde-Smith to temporarily succeed Cochran, who retired amid health concerns in April. She will serve until the special election is resolved.

In 1986, Espy became the first African American since Reconstruction to win a U.S. House seat in Mississippi. If he defeats Hyde-Smith, he would be the first African American since Reconstruction to represent the state in the U.S. Senate.

Hyde-Smith, who is endorsed by President Trump, is the first woman to represent Mississippi in either chamber of Congress, and after being appointed is trying to become the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the state.

Lamar White Jr., publisher of a left-leaning Louisiana news site called The Bayou Brief, posted the video Sunday on social media. White said he received the video late Saturday from “a very reliable, trusted source,” but he would not reveal the person’s name. He said that source received it from the person who shot the video.

The national NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who is from Mississippi, tweeted Sunday that Hyde-Smith’s “shameful remarks prove once again how Trump has created a climate that normalizes hateful, racist rhetoric from political candidates.”

A Republican state lawmaker in Mississippi, Rep. Karl Oliver, came under sharp criticism in May 2017 after he posted on Facebook that people should be lynched for removing Confederate monuments.