“Mississippi’s not a state; it’s a club.”
This saying, once common among white Mississippians of an older generation, aptly describes, for better and for worse, the most “Southern” of states….
Today this “clubbiness” of Mississippi often transcends race and sometimes even class, especially for expatriates, but in the first half of the twentieth century the “club” was very much a white, usually upper class, male one.
Duncan Gray Jr., therefore, had automatic membership.