I know that in the south, "state's rights" is a long understood codeword for the right to segregate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States'_rights#States.27_rights_as_.22code_word.22
"The term "states' rights", some have argued, was used as a code word by defenders of segregation, and was the official name of the "Dixiecrat" party led by segregationist presidential candidate Strom Thurmond. George Wallace, the Alabama governor, who famously declared in his inaugural address, "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!", later remarked that he should have said, "States' rights now! States' rights tomorrow! States' rights forever!" Wallace, however, claimed that segregation was but one issue symbolic of a larger struggle for states' rights; in that view, which some historians dispute, his replacement of segregation with states' rights would be more of a clarification than a euphemism."
I know that ther sleepy little town of Philadelphia Mississippi, in the summer of 1980, was known for one thing: the fact that the murderers of civil rights workers killed decades earlier were walking around free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia,_Mississippi
"Philadelphia is most famous as the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964. This incident later became the basis for the movie Mississippi Burning. Eighteen persons, including the sheriff and deputy sheriff, were charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for violating the civil rights of the three dead men; 7 were convicted. No legal action was taken on the actual murders by the state of Mississippi until 2005, when one of the participants, Edgar Ray Killen, was convicted on three counts of manslaughter (one for each of the dead men).
In 1980 Ronald Reagan gave his first post-convention speech after being officially chosen as the Republican nominee for President of the United States a few miles from Philadelphia, announcing at the annual Neshoba County Fair, that with specific regard to economic policy, "I believe in states' rights ... believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." He went on to promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them".
Some thought Reagan's speech marked the continuation of the successful Republican "Southern strategy"; this was supposedly evidence of Reagan's libertarian belief in federalism and a greater role for states in determining their own policies. However, given the history of Philadelphia, and Reagan's use of the words "states' rights", often interpreted as a desire to return to pre-Civil War laws regarding segregation, many felt that Reagan was at least insensitive to the concerns of blacks, or that he even was using this location and these words as a cynical appeal to the white racist vote"
Chosing THAT town and using THAT codeword in his very first campaign speech after getting the republican nomination was not, in my humble opinion, coincidental.