It is the purpose of this paper to examine the political and human rights struggle of Claiborne County, Mississippi, from 1967 to 1983. This paper explores how Black leadership came into the mainstream, only to be checked by petty politics, self-interest, greed, and corruption. In the Black and poor communities of Claiborne County, poverty has hardly changed despite the passage of time and laws. If anything, poverty has been deepened by unrealized promises and unfulfilled hopes. Progress in the State of Mississippi came slowly. In 1954, Medgar Evers attempted to enroll in law school at the University of Mississippi; in 1958, Clennon King tried to enter "Ole Miss," and Clyde Kennard tried to enter what was then Mississippi Southern—all were denied admittance to those universities. In December 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, Eldridge Cleaver wrote, “somewhere in the universe a gear in the machinery had shifted.” The arrest of the 42-year-old Black seamstress caught the attention of a 26-year-old minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. King, then newly installed as Assistant Minister at the Dexter Avenue Church in Montgomery, became the spokesman for the infamous Alabama Bus Boycott. The time had come. Finally, in 1962, James Meredith, with federal government support, broke the color line at “Ole Miss.” Even the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers did not halt the momentum of the social movement—if anything, the murder made people more determined than ever to be free. The precedent for this human and political struggle was set by the summer of 1964, described by Black Panther leader Bobby Seale as the time to “Seize the Times.” It was a summer marked by confrontation, bombings, intimidation, and murder. The seeds of Freedom Summer were planted long ago when the first slaves were brought to America. Sweeping federal legislation, particularly the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), helped give Black Americans the right to vote and inspired the people of Claiborne County to push for an end to discrimination and to take an active role in the political process. Eighteen years later, through the use of the Voting Rights Act and growing recognition of its importance, more than 26 Black individuals were elected to public governmental positions of power. This paper highlights the real message of this people’s struggle and the effective use of political power. In Claiborne County, part of the dilemma began with a series of political assumptions. The first assumption was that most of the Black leaders of the 1960s, if elected to positions of power, would do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The second assumption was that the formation of public policy would be independent of the private sector.