National States' Rights Party

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

National States' Rights Party is a far right party that found a minor role in the politics of the United States.

Founded in 1958 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the party was based on antisemitism and opposition to African American people^[1] (as well as the issue of states' rights against the advance of the civil rights movement) and was dismissed by opponents as a Nazi party. The National Chairman of the party was J. B. Stoner and the party produced a newspaper, Thunderbolt, which was edited by Edward Reed Fields.^[2]

During the 1960 presidential election, the NSRP nominated Governor of Arkansas Orval E. Faubus for President and retired Rear Admiral John G. Crommelin of Alabama for Vice President. Faubus, however, did not campaign from this ticket actively, and won only 0.07% of the vote (best in his native Arkansas - 6.76%.^[3] Beyond matters of Federal-led integration, Faubus was always viewed as a progressive Democrat (unlike James D. Johnson), who later even endorsed Jesse Jackson in the 1984 Democratic presidential primaries. The party also ran in the 1964 presidential election, nominating John Kasper for President and Jesse Stoner for Vice President, although they won only 0.01%.^[4]

The party began to expand its operations and moved to new headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama in 1960. Supporters were soon kitted out in the party uniform of white shirts, black pants and tie and an armband bearing the thunderbolt version of the Wolfsangel.^[5] Thunderbolt itself gained a circulation of 15,000 in the late 1960s and the party became active in rallies across the United States, with events in Baltimore, Maryland in 1966 particularly notorious with five leading members imprisoned for inciting riots.^[6] The Federal Bureau of Investigation targeted the NSRP under its COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE program.^[7]

The party attempted to gain international contacts and during the 1970s took part in annual international neo-Nazi rallies at Diksmuide, alongside such groups as the Order of Flemish militants and the United Kingdom-based League of Saint George.^[8]

The party saw its influence decline in the 1970s as chief ideologue Fields began to devote more of his energies to the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, in April 1976 U.S. Attorney General Edward H. Levi concluded an FBI investigation into the group, after it was decided that they posed no threat.

The 1980s saw the terminal decline of the NSRP, beginning initially with Stoner being convicted for a bombing in 1980. Without his leadership the party descended into factionalism and in August 1983, Fields was expelled for spending too much time on the KKK. Without its two central figure the NSRP fell apart and by 1987 they had ceased to exist altogether.^[9]

The group had no specific connection to the less extreme States' Rights Democratic Party, although it did share some of its views. Similarly, the party has no direct connection to the group of the same name set up in June 2005 in Philadelphia, Mississippi after the conviction of Edgar Ray Killen for his role in three 1964 murders (although this group consciously picked the name to evoke Stoner's defunct movement).^[10]