Ross Barnett

Ross Robert Barnett (January 22, 1898 – November 6, 1987) was the governor of Mississippi from 1960 to 1964. He was a prominent member of the Dixiecrats, Southern Democrats who supported racial segregation.

Early life

Born in Standing Pine in Leake County in the heart of Mississippi, Barnett was the youngest of ten children of John William Barnett, a Confederate veteran, and the former Virginia Ann Chadwick. He served in the United States Army during World War I, then worked in a variety of jobs while earning an undergraduate degree from Mississippi College in Clinton in 1922. Four years later, he followed that with an LL.B. from the University of Mississippi at Oxford. In 1929, he married Mary Pearl Crawford, a schoolteacher, with the couple's long-time union producing two daughters and a son.

Over the next quarter century, Barnett became one of the state's most successful trial lawyers, earning more than $100,000 per year with specialty in damage suits. He often donated his skills to causes and served as president of the Mississippi Bar Association for two years beginning in 1943.