Mothers of massive resistance : white women and the politics of white supremacy / Elizabeth Gillespie McRae.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McRae, Elizabeth Gillespie, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

White supremacy movements--United States--History--20th century.

White supremacy movements.

Women, White--Political activity--United States--History.

Women, White.

Women, White--United States--Attitudes--History--20th century.

Women, White--United States--Social life and customs--20th century.

Segregation--United States--History--20th century.

Segregation.

Race discrimination--United States--History--20th century.

Race discrimination.

Racism--United States--History--20th century.

Racism.

United States--Race relations--History--20th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 pages) : illustrations (black and white)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018]

Summary:

Examining racial segregation from 1920s to the 1970s, this book argues that white segregationist women constituted the grassroots workforce for racial segregation. For decades, they censored textbooks, campaigned against the United Nations, denied marriage certificates, celebrated school choice, and lobbied elected officials. They trained generations, built national networks, collapsed their duties as white mothers with those of citizenship, and experimented with a color-blind political discourse. Their work beyond legislative halls empowered the Jim Crow order with a flexibility and a kind of staying power. With white women at the center of the story, massive resistance and the rise of postwar conservatism rises out of white women’s grassroots work in homes, schools, political parties, and culture. Their efforts began before World War II and the Brown Decision and persisted past the removal of “white only” signs in 1964 and through the anti-busing protests. White women’s segregationist politics involved foreign affairs, economic policy, family values, strict constitutionalism, states’ rights, and white supremacy. It stretched across the nation and overlapped with and helped shape the rise of the New Right. In the end, this history compels us to confront the reign of racial segregation as a national story. It asks us to reconsider who sustained the Jim Crow order, who bears responsibility for the persistence of the nation’s inequities, and what it will take to make good on the nation’s promise of equality.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Segregation's Constant Gardeners

Part I: Massive Support for Segregation, 1920-1942: Chapter 1 The Color Line in Virginia: The Home Grown Production of White Supremacy

Chapter 2 Citizenship Education for a Segregated Nation

Chapter 3 Campaigning for a Jim Crow South

Chapter 4 Jim Crow Storytelling

Part II: Massive Resistance to the Black Freedom Struggle: Chapter 5 Partisan Betrayals: A Bad Woman, Weak White Men, and the End of a Party

Chapter 6 Jim Crow's International Enemies and Nationwide Allies

Chapter 7 Threats Within: Black Southerners, 1954-1956

Chapter 8 White Women, White Youth, and the Hope of the Nation

Conclusion: The New National Face of Segregation: Boston Women Against Busing

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

OUP approval plan 2018

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

0-19-027173-6

0-19-027174-4

0-19-027172-8