Citizens' Councils

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Citizens' Councils
File:White Citizens Council.jpg
Citizens' Councils logo
Abbreviation WCC
Successor Council of Conservative Citizens
Formation July 11, 1954; 69 years ago (1954-07-11)
Membership
 60,000 (1955)
Founder
 Robert Patterson

The Citizens' Councils (also referred to as White Citizens' Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South. The first was formed on July 11, 1954[1] After 1956, it was known as the Citizens' Councils of America. With about 60,000 members across the United States,[2] mostly in the South, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of schools, but they also supported segregation of public facilities during the 1950s and 1960s. Members used severe intimidation tactics including economic boycotts, firing people from jobs, propaganda, and occasionally violence against civil-rights activists.

By the 1970s, following passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s and enforcement of constitutional rights by the federal government, the influence of the Councils had waned considerably. The successor organization to the White Citizens' Councils is the Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1985.[2]

History

In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that legal segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Some sources claim that the White Citizens' Council first started after this in Greenwood, Mississippi.[3] Others say that it originated in Indianola, Mississippi.[4] The recognized leader was Robert B. Patterson of Indianola,[1][5] a plantation manager and a former captain of the Mississippi State University football team. Additional chapters soon arose in other communities in the South. At this time, most southern states had legal racial segregation of all public facilities, dating from the late 19th century; in places where laws did not require segregation, Jim Crow custom generally enforced it. From 1890 to 1908, the states had disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites by passing new constitutions and other laws making voter registration and elections more difficult. Despite civil rights organizations winning some legal challenges, most blacks in the 1950s were still disfranchised in the South and remained so until after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Patterson and his followers formed the WCC in part to respond to increased activism by the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a grassroots civil rights organization organized in 1951 by T. R. M. Howard of the all-black town Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Mound Bayou was 40 miles from Indianola. Although as an adult Patterson opposed negro civil rights groups, in boyhood in Clarksdale, he had been friends with Aaron Henry, later an official in the RCNL and the future head of the Mississippi NAACP.[6]

Within a few months, the WCC had attracted members; new chapters developed beyond Mississippi in the rest of the Deep South. The Council often had the support of the leading citizens of many communities, including business, civic and sometimes religious leaders, many of whom were members.

Economic retaliation and violence

Clipping from Citizens' Council newspaper, June 1961

Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, which had revived for a time, the WCC met openly and was seen as "pursuing the agenda of the Klan with the demeanor of the Rotary Club."[7] The group eschewed the use of violence,[1] instead using economic and political tactics against activists, threatening their jobs or causing people to be fired or evicted from rental homes; they boycotted businesses, ensured that activists could not get loans, and similar tactics.[3] But, the historian Charles Payne notes, "Despite the official disclaimers, violence often followed in the wake of Council intimidation campaigns."[7] Occasionally some Councils directly incited violence.

For instance, in Montgomery, Alabama, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, at which Senator James Eastland "ranted against the NAACP"[8] at a large Council meeting in the Garrett Coliseum, a mimeographed flyer was distributed saying:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all whites are created equal with certain rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers.[9]

The Citizens' Councils used economic tactics against negroes whom they considered as supportive of desegregation and voting rights, or for belonging to the NAACP, or even suspected of being activists; the tactics included "calling in" the mortgages of blacks, denying loans and business credit, pressing employers to fire them, and boycotting black-owned businesses.[10] In some cities, the Councils published lists of names of NAACP supporters and signers of anti-segregation petitions in local newspapers in order to encourage economic retaliation.[11] For instance, in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1955, the Citizens' Council published in the local paper the names of 53 signers of a petition for school integration. Soon afterward, the petitioners lost their jobs and had their credit cut off.[12] As Charles Payne puts it, the Councils operated by "unleashing a wave of economic reprisals against anyone, Black or white, seen as a threat to the status quo."[7] Their targets included black professionals such as teachers.

Medgar Evers' first work for the NAACP on a national level involved interviewing Mississippians who had been intimidated by the Citizens' Councils and preparing affidavits for use as evidence against the Councils if necessary.[13] Evers was assassinated in 1963 by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Citizens' Council as well as the Ku Klux Klan.[14] The Citizens' Council paid his legal expenses in his two trials in 1964, which both resulted in hung juries.[15] In 1994, Beckwith was tried by the state of Mississippi based on new evidence, in part revealed by a lengthy investigation by the Jackson Clarion Ledger; he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.[16]

Political influence

File:Joe d waggonner jr.jpg
Joe D. Waggonner, Jr.

Many leading state and local politicians were members of the Councils; in some states, this gave the organization immense influence over state legislatures. In Mississippi, the State Sovereignty Commission funded the Citizens' Councils, in some years providing as much as $50,000. This state agency, funded by the taxes paid by all citizens, also shared information with the Councils that it had collected through investigation and surveillance of integration activists.[17] For example, Dr. M. Ney Williams was both a director of the Citizens' Council and an adviser to governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi.[18] Barnett was a member of the Council, as was Jackson mayor Allen C. Thompson.[19] In 1955, in the midst of the bus boycott, all three members of the Montgomery city commission in Alabama announced on television that they had joined the Citizens' Council.[20]

Numan Bartley wrote, "In Louisiana the Citizens' Council organization began as (and to a large extent remained) a projection of the Joint Legislative Committee to Maintain Segregation."[21] In Louisiana, leaders of the original Citizens' Council included State Senator and gubernatorial candidate William M. Rainach, U.S. Representative Joe D. Waggonner, Jr., the publisher Ned Touchstone, and Judge Leander Perez, considered the political boss of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes near New Orleans.[22] After he left the editorship of the Shreveport Journal in 1971, George W. Shannon relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, to work on The Citizen, a monthly magazine of the Citizens' Council. The Citizen halted publication in January 1979, by which time Shannon had returned to Shreveport.[23]

On July 16, 1956, "under pressure from the White Citizens Councils,"[24] the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law mandating racial segregation in nearly every aspect of public life; much of the segregation already existed under Jim Crow custom. The bill was signed into law by governor Earl Long on 16 July 1956 and went into effect on 15 October 1956. The act read, in part:

An Act to prohibit all interracial dancing, social functions, entertainments, athletic training, games, sports, or contests and other such activities; to provide for separate seating and other facilities for white and negroes [lower case in original] ... That all persons, firms, and corporations are prohibited from sponsoring, arranging, participating in or permitting on premises under their control ... such activities involving personal and social contact in which the participants are members of the white and negro races ... That white persons are prohibited from sitting in or using any part of seating arrangements and sanitary or other facilities set apart for members of the negro race. That negro persons are prohibited from sitting in or using any part of seating arrangements and sanitary or other facilities set apart for white persons.[24]

School desegregation and the demise of the councils

Throughout the last half of the 1950s, the White Citizens' Councils produced children's books that taught that Heaven is segregated.[25] The White Citizens' Council in Mississippi prevented school integration until 1964.[26] As school desegregation increased in some parts of the South, in some communities the WCC sponsored "council schools," private institutions set up for white children, as these were beyond the reach of the ruling on public schools.[27] Many of these private "segregation academies" continue to operate today.

By the 1970s, as white Southerners' attitudes toward desegregation began to change following passage of federal civil rights legislation in the 1960s and enforcement of integration and voting rights, the influence of the WCCs began to wane. A few such groups still exist, including the Council of Conservative Citizens, founded by former White Citizens' Council members.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Stephen Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, pages 91-92
  9. ↑ Stephen Oates Let the Trumpet Sound pages 91-92
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. reprinted in Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. reprinted in Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Dr. John Dittmer, "'Barbour is an Unreconstructed Southerner': Prof. John Dittmer on Mississippi Governor's Praise of White Citizens' Councils", 22 December 2010 video report by Democracy Now!, accessed 21 November 2011
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Further reading

  • Geary, Daniel and Sutton, Jennifer. "Resisting the Wind of Change: The Citizens' Councils and European Decolonization," in Cornelius A. van Minnen and Manfred Berg, eds., The U.S. South and Europe, University of Kentucky Press, 2013.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

FBI files

Citizens' Council FBI files obtained through the FOIA and hosted at the Internet Archive, Library of Congress:

Files on the movement in general

Files on local groups

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