| White Citizens' Council | |
|---|---|
A logo of the White Citizens' Council |
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| Abbreviation | WCC |
| Successor | Council of Conservative Citizens |
| Formation | July 11, 1954 |
| Membership | 60,000 (1955) |
| Founder | Robert Patterson |
The White Citizens' Council (WCC) was an American white supremacist organization formed on July 11, 1954.[1] After 1956, it was known as the Citizens' Councils of America. With about 60,000 members,[2] mostly in the South, the group was well known for its opposition to racial integration during the 1950s and 1960s, when it retaliated with economic boycotts and other strong intimidation against black activists, including depriving them of jobs.
By the 1970s, following passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s and stronger enforcement of rights by the federal government, the influence of the WCC had waned considerably. The successor organization to the White Citizens' Council is the Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1985.[2]
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Some sources claim that the White Citizens' Council originated in Greenwood, Mississippi following the 1954-1955 US Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education that school segregation was unconstitutional.[3] Others say that it originated in Indianola, Mississippi.[4] The leader was Robert B. Patterson [5] of Indianola.[1] He was a plantation manager and the former captain of the Mississippi State University football team. Additional chapters soon appeared in other communities.
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 by T. R. M. Howard of the all-black town Mound Bayou, Mississippi in 1951. Mound Bayou was 40 miles from Indianola. Although as an adult Patterson opposed such groups, in boyhood in Clarksdale, Mississippi, 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, and new chapters developed beyond Mississippi in the rest of the Deep South. It often had the support of the leading citizens of many communities, including business, civic and sometimes religious leaders.
Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, 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.[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, a mimeographed flyer containing the following was distributed at a large Council meeting in the Garrett Coliseum:
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.[8]
The Citizens' Councils used economic tactics against African Americans they considered as supportive of desegregation and voting rights, or for belonging to the NAACP; the tactics included "calling in" their mortgages, denying loans and business credit, and boycotting black-owned businesses.[9] 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.[10] For instance, in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1955, the Citizens' Council arranged for the names of 53 signers of a petition for school integration to appear in a local paper, and soon afterward, the petitioners lost their jobs and had their credit cut off.[11] 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] Medgar Evers' first work for the NAACP on a national level involved interviewing Mississippians who had been intimidated by the Citizens' Councils and preparing affadavits for use as evidence against the Councils if necessary.[12]
Many state and local politicians were members of the Councils, which at least in some states, 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 also shared information it had collected through investigation and surveillance of integration activists with the Councils.[13] For example, Dr. M. Ney Williams was both a director of the Citizens' Council and an advisor to governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi.[14] Barnett was a member of the Council, as was Jackson mayor Allen C. Thompson.[15] In 1955, in the midst of the bus boycott, all three members of the Montgomery, Alabama city commission announced on television that they had joined the Citizens' Council.[16]
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."[17] In Louisiana, leaders of the original Citizens' Council included State Senator and gubernatorial candidate William Rainach, future 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 south of New Orleans.[18] On July 16, 1956, "under pressure from the White Citizens Councils,"[19] the Louisiana State Legislature passed an amendment to the Louisiana Constitution mandating racial segregation in nearly every aspect of public life. The bill was signed into law by governor Earl Long on 16 July 1956 and went into effect on 15 October, 1956. The amendment 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.[19]
The White Citizens' Council in Mississippi prevented school integration until 1964.[20] As school desegregation increased, in some communities the WCC sponsored "council schools," private institutions set up for white children.[21] Many of these private "segregation academies" continue to operate today.
By the 1970s, as white Southerners' attitudes toward desegregation began to change following 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]