Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1960. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-112). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

This study examines the ideology of white southern opposition to the civil rights movement in order to recognize the transformation of white concepts of race in the midst of racial change and how those changes impacted the emergence of new conservative political principles in the post-civil rights era. The recognition of a new racial consciousness informs historical appraisals of the significance of white resistance and suggests that this opposition made a vital contribution to the political realignments of the 1960s and 1970s. The foundation of this study rests upon the Citizens’ Council Forum, a television and radio program that aired from 1957-1966. Forum’s sponsor, the Citizens’ Council of America, has been consistently recognized as the most highly-organized and active of white resistance organizations in the South. Forum was the Council’s effort to place its organizing principles of states’ rights and racial integrity among a myriad of other pressing political problems in order to sell its campaign to preserve segregation to an audience that extended beyond the borders of the South. This effort required guests of the show to subvert questions of racial equality to broader concerns of federal power, liberal politics and foreign policy. Attention to these topics in addition to Forum discussions of the civil rights movement reveals that in the process of opposing racial change, white resistance helped usher in a new era of racial consciousness that concealed race within conservative ideas. Race became a powerful insinuation within these issues. The “colorblind” tactics of Forum guests eschewed direct denunciations of the black race but ensured that race would remain a firm component of public political discussions. This study highlights the importance of reaction to historical change as a way to understand the evolution of ideas. As the civil rights movement instigated new, more equitable ideas about race, its opponents acted in parallel ways to repackage the principles of white supremacy. They did so by leveraging principles against the actual conditions that the system of racial discrimination wrought. Less visible forms of racialized rhetoric replaced the raw language of segregation and gave segregationists and their sympathizers a home in conservative politics.

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abstract: Rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke has asserted the significance of paying equal, if not more attention to, propagandist rhetoric, arguing that "there are other ways of burning books on the pyre-and the favorite method of the hasty reviewer is to deprive himself and his readers by inattention." Despite Burke's exhortation, attention to white supremacist discourse has been relatively meager. Historians Clive Webb and Charles Eagles have called for further research on white supremacy arguing that attention to white supremacist discourse is important both to fully understand and appreciate pro-civil rights rhetoric in context and to develop a more complex understanding of white supremacist rhetoric. This thesis provides a close examination of the literature and rhetoric of two white supremacist organizations: the Citizens' Council, an organization that sprang up in response to the 1954 landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education and Stromfront.org, a global online forum community that hosts space for supporters of white supremacy. Memory scholars Barbie Zelizer, John Bodnar, and Stephen Brown note the usability of memory to shape social, political, and cultural aspects of society and the potential implications of such shaping. Drawing from this scholarship, the analysis of these texts focuses specifically on the rhetorical shaping of memory as a vehicle to promote white supremacy. Through an analysis of the Citizens' Council's use of historical events, national figures and cultural stereotypes, Chapter 1 explicates the organization's attempt to form a memorial narrative that worked to promote political goals, create a sense of solidarity through resistance, and indoctrinate the youth in the ideology of white supremacy. Chapter 2 examines the rhetorical use of memory on Stormfront and explains how the website capitalizes upon the wide reaching global impact of World War II to construct a memorial narrative that can be accessed by a global audience of white supremacists. Ultimately, this thesis offers a focused review of the rhetorical signatures of two white supremacist groups with the aim of combating contemporary instantiations of racist discourse. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2013

Hazel Brannon Smith, a prominent white newspaper owner in Mississippi before, during, and after the civil rights era was an avowed supporter of Jim Crow segregation for the first half of her career, until pressure from the white establishment and the changing political and social milieu of the 1950s and 1960s pushed her to become an ally of the black struggle for social justice. Smith's biography reveals how many historians have miscast white liberals of this period. Smith was considered a liberal by her peers, but her actions reveal the firm limits of white liberalism in the rural South during the Civil Rights era. While this dissertation undergirds scholarly research over the last twenty years which viewed the fight for civil rights from a grounds root level, it shows how Smith was unique. She never fully escaped her white paternalistic sentiments, yet she spoke out consistently against racial extremism in Mississippi in the 1960s. Based upon newspaper accounts, personal collections, oral histories and recent scholarly treatments, this work argues that the white response to the civil rights movement in Mississippi was far from uniform.