The first Black state legislators, elected in the late fall of 1869, took their seats in January of 1870 with five men in the Senate (14 percent) and thirty-five men (47 percent) in the House of Representatives.

In the early twentieth century, Black people in Mississippi who aimed to exercise their rights as citizens of the United States had few allies. Bringing civil rights cases required at a minimum two willing parties: a person, or people, denied constitutional rights and a lawyer. 

Jessie Mosley, a founder of Womanpower Unlimited and longtime historian of the black experience in Mississippi, helped to establish sections of the NCNW around the state. As the first NCNW state convener, Mosley helped build the number of NCNW sections from zero in 1964 to twenty-seven by 1973.