Mississippians' unwillingness to get vaccinated stems from a distrust of government rooted in decades of Republican messaging

• "States' rights" has been a GOP rallying cry in Mississippi for decades.
• With vaccine appointments left unfilled, experts are worried that no more residents will get the vaccine.
• A fear of government intervention has crippled the state's COVID response and vaccination efforts.

• W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of A Place Like Mississippi and is a visiting professor of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
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When Ronald Reagan opened his 1980 general election campaign at Mississippi's Neshoba County Fair, he proclaimed, "I believe in states' rights … And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment."

On that distant hot summer afternoon Reagan's message resonated with the audience since it was something they had heard before. "State's rights" was the same phrase used to justify Jim Crow segregation, poll taxes, and literacy tests for Black voters. In the words he chose, Reagan showed that he spoke Mississippi's language.

Reagan's speech was also thinly-disguised racism - and uttered not far from where three murdered civil rights workers were buried in an earthen dam in the summer of 1964 - yet its sentiment of brash independence rang true with those who heard it.

Today the Republican party dominates Mississippi politics. After a period of racially-integrated governance from 1980 to 2000, Mississippi has now entered a second phase of disenfranchisement - much like the period that followed the two decades of Reconstruction - in which the legislature's mostly Black Democratic minority has been locked out by the entirely white Republican majority. The idea that government can help Mississippians, with policies such as Medicaid expansion, is immediately dismissed. The same can be said about the state's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has largely avoided government support and public health guidelines during the crisis.

Although the rallying cry of state's rights has not been used to justify the way the COVID crisis has been handled in Mississippi, it might as well have been. The language used by Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and those in his circle of Republican legislators echoes the belief that government cannot interfere in anything, even if it is during a pandemic that threatens the lives of every last citizen of the state. Yet the question remains, can the good the government is seeking to do during this crisis overshadow years of Republican messaging to the contrary?

States rights and COVID

Ever since COVID cases began to rise in Mississippi a year ago, the state has handled the crisis with a complete lack of consistency, with one message from the governor and Republican state legislators and another from local officials who have been seeking to keep their communities safe. Initially, the governor's message was that as a rural state, the pandemic was not going to have the same impact as it was having in large cities, so there was no need for tight restrictions. Gov. Reeves' brand of exceptionalism proved to be wrong, as COVID cases escalated over the summer months, striking the poor and communities of color hard.

By July, about one in six state lawmakers tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Dr. Thomas Dobbs of the Mississippi Health Department, since most lawmakers flouted mask requirements in the state Capitol, citing their personal freedom as a reason not to wear a mask.

Then there was Mississippi's patchwork quilt of county-by-county mask mandates and COVID restrictions on bars and restaurants, which ignored that the virus could travel across county lines, since people in rural Mississippi often shop and seek medical attention across those artificial borders. When Gov. Reeves lifted the mask mandate in March, he told CNN's Jake Tapper that while he strongly encouraged the wearing of masks, he did not feel the number of COVID cases in the state "required government intervention."

Widespread vaccine hesitancy

Today Mississippi may have vaccinated nearly a quarter of its population, but the mixed messaging from Gov. Reeves over the past year has now kept the needle from moving quickly on getting enough shots in arms. As The New York Times recently reported, there is now a pile up in unclaimed vaccination appointments in the state, and public health officials believe it is a sign of vaccine hesitancy. And this is during a period when anyone over the age of 16 is eligible for the vaccine.

The state needs to do something to overcome this issue, but the question remains, will a push by the state to get more people vaccinated be viewed as, to use Gov. Reeves's phrasing, "government intervention?" Given the history of the state, an aversion to the idea that government can help the common good stands at the root of the hesitancy.

Interestingly enough, Mississippi has one of the nation's best child vaccination rates, largely because of a strict mandatory vaccination law that lacks the loopholes found in many states. Mississippi does not allow religious or philosophical exemptions to child vaccination.

But the COVID vaccine is another story.

Bear in mind that Mississippi is a place defined by a volatile mixture of politics and culture. The white population includes a sizeable number of Republican anti-vaxxers since nationally nearly half of Republican men and 40% of Republicans overall have said in surveys that they do not plan to be vaccinated. Mississippi's Black population, which is roughly 38% of the population of the entire state, includes many who are suspicious of the medical establishment and thus the vaccine. White evangelicals have also expressed resistance to taking the vaccine.

When you combine all those factors with a populace conditioned to be suspicious of government, it is little wonder that there is a vaccine surplus in the state. I have seen more yard signs in the college town of Oxford, Mississippi commanding me to trust in Jesus during this pandemic than I have seen signs commanding me to wear a mask or urging me to get vaccinated.

No escaping the past

Since Reagan's speech in Neshoba County in 1980, the message from Mississippi's Republican establishment has been that government is the problem. Now that there is a problem that government can potentially help solve - a solution that provides the key to herd immunity in a state that has been ravaged by the pandemic - any sign of government intervention is still automatically seen as suspect by a large portion of the population, because, for years, their leaders have steadily sent the message to citizens that a government solution as an intrusion.

I often say that in Mississippi, nothing is ever escaped. The past and the present live beside each other across the state's landscape and reverberate against each other. If anything has exposed the years of lies about fear of government that the Republican party has inflicted on Mississippi and the nation, it is this pandemic.

It is time for Mississippians and Americans to learn from our past - and unshackle ourselves from it - rather than continuing to be defined by it. Government help and guidance can help us through this crisis, just as it guided the nation out of the Great Depression. 40 years later, this pandemic has made one thing clear: Ronald Reagan's message of freedom from government has blinded many of us to the realities of the present.

W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of A Place Like Mississippi and is a visiting professor of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.