White Citizens' Councils
White Citizens' Councils were organizations formed in the Southern United States in response to the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. These councils emerged as a means for white citizens, primarily middle-class individuals with influence in their communities, to organize resistance against integration efforts. They sought to present themselves as a more "respectable" alternative to violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The councils utilized propaganda to rally support, often linking integration efforts to communism and promoting notions of white superiority.
At their peak in 1956, memberships surged to between 250,000 and 300,000 individuals, leading to the establishment of a national body known as the Citizens' Councils of America. While they were initially influential in fostering white resistance and maintaining racial segregation, their power waned by the early 1960s as the Civil Rights movement gained traction. Despite their decline, White Citizens' Councils highlighted the potent role of racial division in American political life and laid the groundwork for future neo-Confederate groups. The legacy of these councils reflects a complex and often painful chapter in the history of race relations in the United States.
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White Citizens' Councils
Identification Prosegregation bodies that arose in the American South following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decree that public schools must be racially integrated
Date First councils formed during the summer of 1954
The highly popular White Citizens’ Councils led the fight to prevent integration throughout the South during the mid-1950’s.
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. This decision held special significance in the South, where African American students traditionally attended separate, poorly funded schools. Many southern communities were outraged at this threat to what they regarded as white privilege. In response, white citizens quickly organized to impede attempts at integration. The White Citizens’ Councils became a prominent force in this resistance movement.
The inspiration for organized white resistance came from a strident speech delivered by Tom Brady , a Mississippi circuit court judge, shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision. Later expanded into a ninety-page tract titled Black Monday, Brady’s speech was distributed widely and served as a rallying cry for concerned white citizens. Robert B. Patterson, a plantation manager, responded by organizing influential citizens of Indianola, Mississippi, into the first chapter of the White Citizens’ Council. Other chapters quickly sprung up, predominantly in communities that possessed small white populations and where civil rights organizations were active.
The councils’ memberships largely consisted of middle-class whites who possessed influence in their communities, such as business owners, lawyers, judges, bankers, politicians, and doctors. The councils were viewed as the “respectable” alternative to violent segregationist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Determined to present their members as responsible, upstanding citizens, they publicly encouraged legal acts of resistance. Often they used propaganda to educate the public. The propaganda typically attempted to unify white communities into fighting integration by linking it to communism, depicting African Americans as inferior, and disparaging leading civil rights organizations. Nevertheless, some councils used more disturbing and underhanded means of achieving their ends. For example, in his book The Fiery Cross (1987), Wyn Wade reported that a council in Mississippi retaliated against a group of African Americans who supported integration by prominently publishing their names and addresses in a local newspaper. As a result, some of the African Americans lost their jobs; others were intimidated into moving from the town.
By 1956, membership in the councils reached a peak of between 250,000 and 300,000 southerners. At this time, a sufficient number of council chapters had been established to prompt the creation of a national organization called the Citizens’ Councils of America.
Impact
Despite the grassroots efforts of middle-class southerners to defend their racist traditions, their efforts ultimately failed. By the early 1960’s, the influence of the White Citizens’ Councils had dwindled in the face of the gains made by the Civil Rights movement and by the rising popularity of the Ku Klux Klan. Nonetheless, the councils did demonstrate that appeals to racial division could resonate powerfully in the political arena. Thus, they served as forerunners to later neo-Confederate organizations such as the Council of Conservative Citizens.
Bibliography
Diamond, Sara. “Organized Resistance to Preserve Segregation.” In Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. New York: Guilford Press, 1995. Diamond chronicles the development and influence of right-wing thought in the United States and helps readers understand the place of the White Citizens’ Councils within this larger movement.
McMillen, Neil R. The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction, 1954-1964. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971. Perhaps the most definitive treatise on the White Citizens’ Councils, this text discusses the organization’s inception, evolution, and eventual decline.
Wade, Wyn. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. Although primarily a discussion of the Ku Klux Klan, there is some discussion about the role of the White Citizens’ Councils in the prosegregation movement.