Wright Thompson

Well, it's interesting.

I mean, I'm, uh, what's interesting to me, I'm from Clarksdale, Mississippi and, uh,

Grew up in a family of farmers, which I'm sure we'll get into later because my whole family still farms.

My father was a professional political fundraiser, among other things.

His trick, because he could really code switch because he looked great in a seersucker suit, but was very, very liberal.

And so his whole thing was raising money for liberal Democrats in the Deep South.

And that was the thing he could do.

I was the only person in my class...

who didn't vote for Ronald Reagan in the mock elections we had.

And I used to ask him, I was like, why don't we ever vote for anybody who wins?

I was like, where did you get your politics?

And he was like, I just hate bullies.

I grew up around this stuff in Mississippi.

Well, I mean, it's called a riot in the way that all racial violence in the South is now referred to as a riot.

It's just a code for strong people were killing defenseless people and we need a new word for it.

But basically what happened is the governor of Mississippi had cut a deal to allow James Meredith to enroll.

He cut a deal with John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

And then he goes down to the Ole Miss football game

that weekend in Jackson, and he got such cheers from the crowd when he talked about, I love Mississippi, I love her customs.

He was talking about segregation.