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'''Wirt Adams Yerger, Jr.''' (born 1930), is a retired [[business]]man from the capital city of [[Jackson]], [[Mississippi]], who is the founding 20th century state chairman of the [[Republican Party]], a position that he filled for the decade from 1956 to 1966.​

'''Wirt Adams Yerger, Jr.''' (born 1930), is a retired [[business]]man from the capital city of [[Jackson]], [[Mississippi]], who is the founding 20th century state chairman of the [[Republican Party]], a position that he filled for the decade from 1956 to 1966.​

 

==Background==​

==Background==​

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Yerger is a son of Wirt Yerger, Sr. (1901-1974) and Rivers Applewhite Yerger (1904-1991), she a native of Columbia in Marion County in southwestern Mississippi. The couple is interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, along with other family members.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=111699935|title=Rivers Applewhite Yerger|publisher=findagrave.com|accessdate=June 30, 2020}}</ref>​

Yerger is a son of Wirt Yerger, Sr. (1901-1974) and Rivers Applewhite Yerger (1904-1991), she a native of Columbia in Marion County in southwestern Mississippi. The couple is interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, along with other family members.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=111699935|title=Rivers Applewhite Yerger|publisher=findagrave.com|accessdate=June 30, 2020}}</ref>​

 

Yerger's younger brother, William Swan Yerger (born 1932), is a retired Hinds County circuit court [[judge]] who served from 1997 to 2010.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mslitigationreview.com/2009/06/articles/hinds-county-circuit-court-2/hinds-circuit-judge-swan-yerger-announces-retirement-in-2010/|author=Philip Thomas|title=Hinds Circuit Judge Swan Yerger announces retirement in 2010|date=June 1, 2009|publisher=''Mississippi Litigation Review''|accessdate=May 10, 2014}}</ref> Swan Yerger, as he is known, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican nominee at the age of thirty-one for the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1963 against [[Democratic Party|Democrat]] William I. S. "Billy" Thompson, the son of Jackson Mayor [[Allen C. Thompson]]. At the time, Swan Yerger was a staunch critic of unpledged electors, which had carried Mississippi and half of [[Alabama]] in the 1960 presidential election.<ref>Billy Hathorn, "Challenging the Status Quo: Rubel Lex Phillips and the Mississippi Republican Party (1963-1967)," ''The Journal of Mississippi History'' XLVII, November 1985, No. 4, p. 254.</ref>​

Yerger's younger brother, William Swan Yerger (born 1932), is a retired Hinds County circuit court [[judge]] who served from 1997 to 2010.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mslitigationreview.com/2009/06/articles/hinds-county-circuit-court-2/hinds-circuit-judge-swan-yerger-announces-retirement-in-2010/|author=Philip Thomas|title=Hinds Circuit Judge Swan Yerger announces retirement in 2010|date=June 1, 2009|publisher=''Mississippi Litigation Review''|accessdate=May 10, 2014}}</ref> Swan Yerger, as he is known, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican nominee at the age of thirty-one for the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1963 against [[Democratic Party|Democrat]] William I. S. "Billy" Thompson, the son of Jackson Mayor Allen Cavett Thompson (1906-1980). At the time, Swan Yerger was a staunch critic of unpledged electors, which had carried Mississippi and half of [[Alabama]] in the 1960 presidential election.<ref>Billy Hathorn, "Challenging the Status Quo: Rubel Lex Phillips and the Mississippi Republican Party (1963-1967)," ''The Journal of Mississippi History'' XLVII, November 1985, No. 4, p. 254.</ref>​

 

Yerger is a former [[insurance]] agent with the firm Ross & Yerger (founded 1860) in Jackson. He is affiliated with Rotary International,  the [[Chamber of Commerce]], and the [[YMCA]]. One of the founders of the Fondren Renaissance Foundation, he also operated the Wirt A. Yerger Jr. Foundation, Inc. He and his wife, Mary, have three children, one of whom is the businessman Wirt, III (born c. 1957).<ref name=bio>{{cite web|url=http://www.cfgreaterjackson.org/giving-you-best.html|title=Wirt Yerger, Jr.|publisher=cfgreaterjackson.org|accessdate=May 10, 2014}}</ref>​

Yerger is a former [[insurance]] agent with the firm Ross & Yerger (founded 1860) in Jackson. He is affiliated with Rotary International,  the [[Chamber of Commerce]], and the [[YMCA]]. One of the founders of the Fondren Renaissance Foundation, he also operated the Wirt A. Yerger Jr. Foundation, Inc. He and his wife, Mary, have three children, one of whom is the businessman Wirt, III (born c. 1957).<ref name=bio>{{cite web|url=http://www.cfgreaterjackson.org/giving-you-best.html|title=Wirt Yerger, Jr.|publisher=cfgreaterjackson.org|accessdate=May 10, 2014}}</ref>​

 

==Political life==​

==Political life==

 

===Winning the chairmanship by one vote===​

===Winning the chairmanship by one vote===​

Yerger led a younger and more vigorous group of [[conservative]] entrepreneurs, [[business]]people, and lawyers, some having previously been part of the Young Republicans organization, and most the product of increasing urbanization of a still predominantly [[rural]]-oriented state. At the age of twenty-six, he was named in his native Jackson as the party's first chairman by the margin of his one vote, his own. Yerger's faction defeated a motion to include [[segregation]] in the first party platform,<ref name=madison/> but many of the early Mississippi Republicans, like their Democratic counterparts,  were segregationists. In 1957 and 1958, Yerger was placed on the defensive in Mississippi following the desegregation of [[Little Rock Central High School]] in [[Little Rock]], [[Arkansas]]. Years later, Yerger said that he and his wife were harassed by segregationists, the kind of treatment also received by [[civil rights]] activists, because he was viewed as a threat to "white rule" as the chairman of the party of the president, [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], who intervened in Little Rock. In 1960, the Mississippi GOP declared segregation a "local matter that could best be handled by individual states" and attempted to focus on other matters, such as [[reapportionment]] of legislative bodies and local-option liquor elections to replace statewide [[prohibition]], which ended in Mississippi in 1966.<ref>"Challenging the Status Quo," p. 241.</ref>​

Yerger led a younger and more vigorous group of [[conservative]] entrepreneurs, [[business]]people, and lawyers, some having previously been part of the Young Republicans organization, and most the product of increasing urbanization of a still predominantly [[rural]]-oriented state. At the age of twenty-six, he was named in his native Jackson as the party's first chairman by the margin of his one vote, his own. Yerger's faction defeated a motion to include [[segregation]] in the first party platform,<ref name=madison/> but many of the early Mississippi Republicans, like their Democratic counterparts,  were segregationists. In 1957 and 1958, Yerger was placed on the defensive in Mississippi following the desegregation of [[Little Rock Central High School]] in [[Little Rock]], [[Arkansas]]. Years later, Yerger said that he and his wife were harassed by segregationists, the kind of treatment also received by [[civil rights]] activists, because he was viewed as a threat to "white rule" as the chairman of the party of the president, [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], who intervened in Little Rock. In 1960, the Mississippi GOP declared segregation a "local matter that could best be handled by individual states" and attempted to focus on other matters, such as [[reapportionment]] of legislative bodies and local-option liquor elections to replace statewide [[prohibition]], which ended in Mississippi in 1966.<ref>"Challenging the Status Quo," p. 241.</ref>​