NY Times: “It was here, in this majority-Black town of 441 people, that Representative Bennie G. Thompson attended a segregated junior high school. It was where his father spent a lifetime working as a mechanic and paying taxes, but never enjoying the right to vote. And it was where the future congressman, in the early 1970s, campaigned for mayor while packing a gun, after receiving threats from white people loath to give up their political power.
So it came as little surprise, to those who know Mr. Thompson well, that he was quick to mention Bolton, Miss., after gaveling to order the first hearing of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching,” said Mr. Thompson, the committee chair. “I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021.”…
Mr. Thompson, who is also chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, has spent nearly 30 years on Capitol Hill, but his leadership of the Jan. 6 committee represents his most significant turn in the national spotlight. And it is thematically consistent with a public life that was forged in Mississippi when disenfranchisement was achieved by chicanery, intimidation and violence.
“I think that he took Jan. 6 personally, based upon his body of work and what he’s stood for regarding making sure people have a voice through the ballot box,” said State Senator Derrick T. Simmons, a fellow Democrat.”