BILOXI, Miss. _ African-American Republicans in Mississippi are standing by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Tuesday's Senate runoff, despite her comment expressing a willingness to attend a public hanging _ a comment that's triggered painful reminders of the state's history of lynching blacks.
"I just choose to look at it as a possible mistake and chalk it up to that," said John Mosley Jr., an African-American Republican who ran for mayor of Moss Point, Mississippi, in 2017. "And I haven't given it much thought afterward."
In nearly a dozen interviews, African-American Republicans said they are taking Hyde-Smith at her word when that she meant "no ill-will, no intent whatsoever" when she said at a Nov. 2 campaign stop that if a supporter invited her to a public hanging "I'd be on the front row."
