
Defending White Democracy
The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965
Jason Morgan Ward(Author)
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 21. November 2011
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-0-8078-3513-5 (ISBN)
Description
After the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, southern white backlash seemed to explode overnight. Journalists profiled the rise of a segregationist movement committed to preserving the ""southern way of life"" through a campaign of massive resistance. In Defending White Democracy , Jason Morgan Ward reconsiders the origins of this white resistance, arguing that southern conservatives began mobilizing against civil rights some years earlier, in the era before World War II, when the New Deal politics of the mid-1930s threatened the monopoly on power that whites held in the South. As Ward shows, years before ""segregationist"" became a badge of honor for civil rights opponents, many white southerners resisted racial change at every turn--launching a preemptive campaign aimed at preserving a social order that they saw as under siege. By the time of the Brown decision, segregationists had amassed an arsenal of tested tactics and arguments to deploy against the civil rights movement in the coming battles. Connecting the racial controversies of the New Deal era to the more familiar confrontations of the 1950s and 1960s, Ward uncovers a parallel history of segregationist opposition that mirrors the new focus on the long civil rights movement and raises troubling questions about the enduring influence of segregation's defenders. |After the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, southern white backlash seemed to explode overnight. However, Jason Morgan Ward argues that southern conservatives began mobilizing against civil rights some years earlier, when the New Deal politics of the mid-1930s threatened the monopoly on power that whites held in the South. Ward uncovers a parallel history of segregationist opposition that mirrors the new focus on the long civil rights movement.
More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8078-3513-5 (9780807835135)
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Additional editions

Jason Morgan Ward
Defending White Democracy
The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965
E-Book
11/2011
The University of North Carolina Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
Jason Morgan Ward is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University.