In 1976 the NAACP faced two lawsuits in Mississippi that threatened to put it out of business. A jury awarded highway patrolman Robert Moody $240,000 in a libel suit. Local NAACP officials had charged Moody with police brutality for allegedly beating a black man outside the town of Utica. Then in August, the Mississippi Chancery Court ruled that white merchants in Port Gibson and Clairborne County were entitled to $1.25 million in damages against the NAACP for a boycott. The NAACP appealed both cases. In 1977 the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the libel judgment. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the boycott judgment in 1982.

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