Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, August 2nd, 1980, Ronald Reagan arrives in Mississippi where he will speak at the Neshoba County Fair the following day.

Reagan had become the Republican nominee for president a few weeks earlier and this was in many ways his general

election kickoff event. The speech he would give would cause a controversy

particularly for its use of one two-word phrase. We're going to talk about that

phrase the location of this speech, and since this is our Sunday election

e-election edition, we'll talk a bit about the 1980 election in general, Ronald Reagan's first campaign,

and how it may help us think through this year's election. Here as always is

Nickelhammer of Columbia. Hello Nicky. Hey Jody. And Kevin M. Cruz,

history professor at Princeton, is back with us. Hello Kevin and happy Sunday.

Happy Sunday.

Kevin, where a candidate chooses to kick off his or her campaign,

whether it's the primary campaign or the general election,

I think tends to be a pretty big signal of what kind of

campaign they're hoping to run. And in this case, there was a lot of symbolism

packed into this one event.

So it's the Neshoba County Fair, which is in Mississippi,

as you mentioned, a place where politicians,

particularly white southern politicians,

had spent a lot of time in the preceding decades.

And that two-word phrase that you mentioned Jody,

...