James Z. George: Mississippi's Great Commoner

When the Mississippi school boy is asked who is called the 'Great Commoner' of public life in his State, wrote Mississippi's premier historian Dunbar Rowland in 1901, ""he will unhesitatingly answer James Z. George."" While George's prominence, along with his white supremacist views, have decreased through the decades since then, many modern historians still view him as a supremely important Mississippian, with one writing that George (1826-1897) was ""Mississippi's most important Democratic leader in the late nineteenth century."" Certainly, the Mexican War veteran, prominent lawyer and plant