In 1986, Mike Espy of Mississippi won a seat in the
U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first Black
Mississippian to serve in Congress in more than 100 years.
During his career, Espy gained unprecedented levels of
biracial support among voters but he often had to navigate
strict racial divisions that were deeply woven into the state’s
society. “Service, service, service,” Espy said when asked to
describe his legislative focus in the House. From his seats
on the Agriculture and Budget Committees, he worked on
economic development issues and procuring aid for farmers
in his impoverished rural district. After three terms in the
House, Espy was appointed Secretary of Agriculture in the
Cabinet of President William J. Clinton.1
Alphonso Michael “Mike” Espy was born in Yazoo City,
Mississippi, on November 30, 1953. He and his twin,
Althea Michelle, were the youngest of Henry and Willie
Jean Espy’s seven children. Both of Espy’s parents graduated
from the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in
Alabama, and his father served as a county agent for the
U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1930s and 1940s
before joining the funeral home business founded by his
father-in-law, T.J. Huddleston Sr. Huddleston, Mike Espy’s
maternal grandfather and one of the wealthiest Black men in the South, founded a chain of funeral homes and in 1928
built the first Black hospital in Mississippi.2
Mike Espy attended a local parochial school through
his first two years of high school. After the school closed in
1969, he transferred to Yazoo City High School. Espy was
one of the only Black students at the school, and he carried a
stick to fend off racist attacks from his classmates. “Relative
to the civil rights experiences of snarling dogs and whips and
things it was pretty tame,” Espy recalled of his schooldays.
“But I’d always have a fight. The teacher would leave the
room, and then you’re one among 35 in a classroom and
they’d make racial jeers.” A year later, in 1970, Yazoo City
High School was fully integrated, and Espy was elected
president of the Black student body during his senior year—the White students had their own president. Espy graduated
with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Howard
University in Washington, DC, in 1975. He earned a law
degree from Santa Clara University Law School in Santa
Clara, California, in 1978, and returned to Mississippi to
practice law. He married Sheila Bell and the couple had two
children: Jamilla and Michael, before divorcing.3
Espy began his political career working in several state
government positions. He served as the first Black assistant secretary of state, managing the central Mississippi legal
services division from 1978 to 1980. For the next four years,
Espy served as assistant secretary of state for the public
lands division, in charge of enforcing a state law that set
aside one of every 36 square miles for educational purposes.
From 1984 to 1985, Espy was assistant state attorney
general for the consumer protection division. Espy also
took on a prominent role in national politics when he
served on the rules committee for the 1984 Democratic
National Convention.4
Following the 1980 Census—nearly 100 years after
the last Black Representative to serve Mississippi, John R.
Lynch, departed the House in 1883—statewide redistricting
created a new congressional district that stretched along the
Mississippi River and encompassed the cities of Vicksburg
and Greenville. The redrawn seat was majority-Black, but
it had a voting-age population that remained majority
White. In 1982, Robert Clark, a Black state legislator,
had come close to defeating White Republican William
Webster Franklin—who appealed to White voters using
a controversial campaign slogan “He’s one of us”—in the
new district. In 1984, federal courts redrew the district’s
boundaries to include more Black voters. The new district
was 58 percent Black, with a voting age population that
was around 53 percent Black. The district also was the most
impoverished in the country; 42 percent of its residents
lived below the national poverty line and five counties had
an unemployment rate of at least 20 percent. When Robert
Clark ran for the seat and lost a second time to Franklin,
Espy studied the results and concluded that, with improved
voter turnout, he could win the seat himself. “The time was
right, it was hot. I saw it in the numbers,” he recalled.5
In 1986, Espy won the Democratic nomination with
50 percent of the vote against two White challengers: Paul
B. Johnson, a grandson of a former Mississippi governor,
and Hiram Eastland, a cousin of the late segregationist
U.S. Senator James Eastland. In the general election, Espy
faced the incumbent Republican, Franklin. Race remained a
stark dividing line in Mississippi, and Espy worked to turn
out Black voters, going door to door asking supporters to
volunteer transportation and other services on Election Day.
“I need you; I can’t do it by myself,” he remembered saying.
“Please sir, please ma’am, turn out, serve as a poll watcher
or a driver or a food-fixer. The answer is in your hands.”
Espy also stepped across the deep racial divide to court
White voters in the district. Doing so, however, required a tenuous balancing act, he said. “You must excite your black
voters and not incite your white voters.” Espy promised
to combat the agricultural depression that plagued White
farmers in western Mississippi, touting a promise from
the soon-to-be House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas that
he would be appointed to the powerful House Agriculture
Committee. On Election Day, Espy won with 52 percent
of the vote, including 12 percent of the White turnout. In
winning his first elective office, Espy also became the only
Black Representative in the 100th Congress (1987–1989)
to represent a rural district. Espy’s historic election caused
the Washington Post to envision a new future for the state of
Mississippi. Espy’s victory “did more than shatter the age-old
color barrier,” the Post reported. “It is further evidence
that Mississippi is ready for a change.”6
Having defeated a Republican incumbent, Democratic
House leaders rewarded Espy with favorable committee
assignments for a first-term Representative, enabling him to
look after the interests of his rural district. He received his
promised seat on the Agriculture Committee as well as an
assignment on the prestigious Budget Committee. He also
served on the Select Committee on Hunger. Espy was reelected
three times. In 1988, Espy won the general election
with 65 percent of the vote and more than tripled his share
of the White vote compared to two years earlier. Espy noted
that his successful first term in Congress, and his focus on
constituent services, caused White voters to “overcome
the apprehension” of voting for a Black candidate. In
Espy’s next two elections, in 1990 and 1992, he defeated
Republican Dorothy Bedford with 84 and 76 percent of the
vote, respectively.7
In his first term, Espy sponsored the Lower Mississippi
Delta Development Act, enlisting the aid of fellow Mississippi
Democrat and powerful Appropriations Committee Chair
Jamie Lloyd Whitten, who helped secure $2 million to fund
the project. The bill, provisions of which were incorporated
into the 1989 agriculture appropriation bill, established a
nine-member panel to study the region’s widespread poverty
and created a plan for economic development along the
banks of the Mississippi River. The governors of participating
states (Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Missouri, and Illinois) selected the commission’s members.
“We must strive to bring this . . . region, which has been
described as soil rich but dirt poor, into full partnership
with the rest of the country,” Espy said in a House Floor
speech. In addition, Espy touted the Mississippi Delta’s fastest-growing enterprise: catfish farming. He sought federal
grants for the thousand-acre pools where catfish were bred
and sponsored a resolution declaring April 4, 1987, as
National Catfish Day. He even persuaded the U.S. Army
to serve catfish in its mess halls at least once a week.8
As the only Black House Member from a rural area
and whose district had formerly been represented by
a Republican, Espy embraced the political center to a
greater degree than did many of his African-American
colleagues in Congress, occasionally putting him at odds
with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). He received
significant pushback from the CBC over his membership
in the National Rifle Association and his support for
welfare reform. “I stopped going to CBC meetings,” he
recalled. “I supported their initiatives, but I just didn’t
feel comfortable.” On most issues, however, Espy sided
with his party. He generally disagreed with President
Ronald Reagan’s focus on building America’s Cold War
military capacity, and voted against authorizing President
George H.W. Bush’s use of military force in Iraq in 1991.
Espy also supported abortion rights.9
Espy was a strong advocate for welfare reform and pushed
for the adoption of programs to assist low-income Americans
in achieving economic self-reliance. As chair of the Budget
Committee’s Task Force on Community Development and
Natural Resources, and as chair of the Select Committee
on Hunger’s Domestic Task Force, he presided over several
hearings on “asset-oriented policy” that focused on boosting
the ability of welfare recipients to save money. Espy
supported the use of Individual Development Accounts
(IDAs) which had certain tax advantages and accrued
interest with matching government contributions. The hope
was that IDAs would help Americans achieve life goals such
as homeownership or starting a business. “It’s not what
you make, it’s what you keep,” Espy noted. The task forces
also heard testimony from advocates of “microenterprises,”
through which welfare recipients received loans from local
banks to start their own small businesses. Working with
Hunger Committee Chair Tony Patrick Hall of Ohio, Espy
cosponsored legislation that sought to develop federal IDA
and microenterprise programs.10
Espy’s involvement in the Lower Mississippi Delta
Development Commission provided him the opportunity
to form a close working relationship with then-Arkansas
Governor Clinton, who chaired the commission. Both
politicians also belonged to the Democratic Leadership Council, a coalition that promoted the same welfare-reform
efforts that Espy pushed in the House. Espy was one of
the first Democratic lawmakers to endorse Clinton’s 1992
candidacy for President. That year, Espy won re-election
to a fourth term in Congress, but had to relinquish his
seat on the Budget Committee after reaching a threeterm
limit. After getting passed over for a seat on the
prestigious Appropriations Committee, Espy wrote out
the top 10 reasons he should head the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA) on the back of an envelope and
handed it to a Clinton aide while attending a postelection
banquet. Clinton offered him the post, and Espy
resigned from Congress on January 22, 1993, to serve in
Clinton’s Cabinet.11
Up to that point, most Agriculture Secretaries had
come from the Midwest, and Espy was the first African
American and the first Mississippian to lead the USDA.
As the fourth-largest federal department, the USDA
oversaw services ranging from the administration of food
assistance programs to farm subsidies. Espy directed several
noteworthy achievements at the USDA, including improved
meat inspection processes after an outbreak of illness
caused by the bacterium E. coli in fast-food hamburgers.
He also trimmed the agency’s bureaucracy and provided
relief for farming areas following devastating Mississippi
River floods in 1993. Espy resigned as Agriculture Secretary
on December 31, 1994, following allegations of ethics
violations. He was indicted on felony bribery and fraud
charges amid accusations that various food companies had
paid his way to sporting events and awarded his girlfriend a
scholarship. Espy was acquitted in 1998.12
Espy returned to Jackson, Mississippi, to practice
law, while also serving an unpaid post as an adviser to
Department of Energy during the last years of the Clinton
administration. In 2018, when Republican Mississippi
Senator William Thad Cochran announced his retirement,
Espy declared his candidacy for the November special
election to fill the seat. In a four-way contest, Espy’s main
opponent was former state agriculture commissioner Cindy
Hyde-Smith, a Republican, who had been appointed to
the Senate seat in April. Running in a predominantly
Republican state, Espy emphasized bipartisanship and
promised to support Mississippi interests over party ideals.
Neither candidate received a majority of the vote on
Election Day, triggering a runoff. On November 27, 2018,
Hyde-Smith defeated Espy with 54 percent of the vote. Espy challenged Hyde-Smith again in 2020 for the full six-year
Senate term. He secured the Democratic nomination
but lost the general election with 44 percent of the vote on
November 3, 2020.13
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