Editing Holmes County, Mississippi (section)

== Media ==
The county newspaper is the [http://www.holmescountyherald.com/ ''Holmes County Herald'']. It was established in 1959 as the weekly paper of the county chapter of the [[Citizens' Councils|White Citizens Council]], founded to resist integration of public schools and the civil rights movement.<ref name="lorenzi"/> Specifically it was founded to compete with ''The Lexington Advertiser'', owned by local white publisher [[Hazel Brannon Smith]], whose politics the White Citizens Council disliked. The Council arranged for Smith's husband to be fired from his job as county hospital administrator. Brannon Smith was eventually forced out of the business by white boycotts of her newspapers and the firebombing of one paper in [[Jackson, Mississippi]].

The ''Herald'' published the names of African Americans who took action for civil rights in order to bring economic and political pressure against them. For instance, in April 1963 it published interviews and the names of 14 blacks who attempted to register to vote at the county courthouse in Lexington. The county circuit clerk published the names weekly of persons who tried to register to vote, thus identifying them for reprisals.<ref name="lorenzi"/> Known or suspected activists were fired from jobs and evicted from rental housing as the Council tried to suppress the civil rights movement. The ''Herald'' was bought by an independent person in 1970.