In light of the role the Council of Conservative Citizens played in inspiring Dylann Roof's attack on the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston South Carolina, I edited and am republishing a post from 2012 about the White Citizens Councils that were the forerunners of the Council of Conservative Citizens, to provide some historical perspective on its origins.
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We we think of Jim Crow we tend to think of swaggering southern Sheriffs with their snarling police dogs, and the Klu Klux Klan and burning crosses. But in places like Mississippi the Klan had disappeared after the 1920s until it was revived in dawn of the civil rights era in the 1950s. Segregation was a pervasive institution that was upheld and enforced the deep south's economic and professional elites. They came together to fight desegregation forming groups to oppose it called Citizen Councils. They put out a pamphlet in 1954 that proclaimed themselves as the "South's answer to the mongrelizers."
The Citizens Councils
Excerpts from: George Thayer, The Father Shores of Politics: The American Political Fringe Today (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967) pp. 107-123
Some people call the Citizens' Councils the White Citizens' Councils; others call them "the white power structure. Hodding Carter calls them "the uptown Klan." But by whatever name they are known, there is no doubt that the Citizens' Councils of America are blood kin to the Ku Klux Klan. To be sure, the Councils and the Klan are not on speaking terms, but the aims are the same: the maintenance of segregation and the preservation of "the Southern way of Life." The Councils appeal to the better educated, more sophisticated Southern segregationist because their tactics are more subtle, more clever than Klan activities. There are no cross-burnings, demonstrations, or cornfield harangues to interest the uneducated, "wool hat" or "redneck" racist. If the mark of a Klansman is cracking skulls, then the mark of a member of the Citizens' Councils is twisting arms.
The Councils, as did the Klan, blossomed into full flower as a direct result of the Supreme Court's 17 May 1954 ruling on Brown vs. the Board of Education, the Court held that "separate but equal" school systems were outside the pale of constitutionality.
Within two months of "The Decision," as it came to be known in the South, the first Council was organized in Indianola, Mississippi. It was the first of hundreds of Citizens' Councils to spring up throughout Dixie during the next twelve months.
Hard-core members in a local Council varied in number from ten or so to two dozen; nearly all of them represented the more prosperous segments of the community: businessmen, lawyers, planters, political officials. The structure of each Council was uncomplicated and flexible, free of Klan jargon and fancy titles. Usually four committees were set up, each one a reflection of major Council concerns: an information and education committee to educate both whites and Negroes on the advantages of segregation and the dangers of integration; a membership and finance committee to create a well-financed white bloc vote; a legal committee to anticipate the moves of the opposition, to carry out countermoves and to recommend the application of "economic pressure to troublemakers" (this reference to economic pressure was later dropped from official CC literature); and a political committee to discourage, among other things, Negro voting.
At first the Citizen Councils were loosely organized, gathering in short lunchtime meetings in downtown clubs. Convenient for businessmen and professionals.
In 1956 a formal national umbrella organization was formed called the Citizens' Councils of America. That year it held its first convention in New Orleans with delegates attending from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
The purposes of the new group remained essentially unaltered from those of the many independent Citizens' Councils: it sought "the preservation of the reserved natural rights of the people of the states, including primarily the separation of the races in our schools and all institutions involving personal and social relations; and . . . the maintenance of our States' Rights to regulate public health, morals, marriage, education, peace and good order in the States, under the Constitution of the United States."
By the early 1960s the White Citizens Councils constituted a considerable political force to be reckoned with across the South.
The size of the Citizens' Councils has always been a subject of speculation. Current estimates put the membership near the 300,000 mark, with 80,000 in Mississippi alone. Many observers dispute these figures. Harris, for one, says that Councils grow and die over a short span of time. "When Martin Luther King comes to Georgia," he said, "there are Citizens' Councils all over the place; when he's not around you can't even get a meeting." Yet, he added quickly, "there are some very small, dedicated groups such as here in Augusta." Transplanted Yankees, Harris claims, form the back-bone of many a Council. "Damn," he said, "after they've been down here awhile they becomes worsen we are."
Politicians, he continued, "are scared to hell of the nigger bloc vote; we've got to take a page from the nigger book and vote together."
Harris spearheaded the Goldwater campaign in Georgia, feeling that the ex-Senator was the first person for whom a Southerner could cast a protest vote. But, he said, "it's difficult for any hard- boiled Southerner to vote the Republican ticket; to get the movement going we had to organize 'Democrats for Goldwater.’" Harris claims credit for Mississippi going for the Republican nominee.
Mississippi voting for Goldwater in 1964 showed Republican political strategists that civil rights could be used as a wedge issue to get southern whites to vote Republican. This realization led to Nixon's infamous "Southern Strategy" in the 1968 election. Nixon made "Law and Order" one of his top issues. "Law and Order" was a dog whistle to send the message that Nixon would be tough on disorder fomented by Black Americans, following the riots that flared up in American ghettos across the country during the tumultuous summer of 1967
Perhaps the one point that distinguishes the Citizens' Councils from the Klan is tactics. While the Klan depends on physical violence, the Councils call on their powers of economic, political and social pressure to keep the white community in line and the black one "where it belongs."
White Citizen Councils had strong ties to other far right wing groups like the John Birch Society. White Citizen Councils had their own newspaper, the Citizen which claimed to have a circulation of 34,000 in 1967. Its editor was William J. Simmons who also wrote pieces for the John Birch Society's publication American Opinion. Simmons wrote:
He believes, for instance, that a three-pronged attack is being mounted by American "egalitarian socialists" against constitutional freedoms.
Advocates of civil rights and desegregation were routinely labeled as communists in pamphlets, and newspapers like the Augusta Courier.
Here is an excerpt from The Citizen that tries to de-legitimize the study of Black History:
A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF NEGRO HISTORY
Introduction
Even the most casual reader of newspapers, magazines, and books must be dismayed by the ever-growing flood of material on Negro history. It almost seems as if some long-buried tomb had been opened to reveal for the first time the glittering epic of a great race that enriched all mankind by its genius and enterprise. But the source of this flood has no basis in fresh archeological discoveries. No precious scrolls have been found; no crumbling library excavated; no pyramid forced to yield its secrets. All that is new is the desire to rewrite Negro history, with a wanton disregard for truth.
The Negro American is reaching for a larger share of economic and political power. Appreciating that Black Power must rest on Black Pride, an "instant" history has been concocted to build Negro self-esteem. With the eager help of numerous politicians, journalists, and academicians, and with more than adequate subsidies from private donors and foundations, a fictional history has been created out of a factual vacuum. The Negro masses have been told they have a record equal or superior to the white man's in the shaping of destiny. They have been led to expect equal or superior roles in tile shaping of our common future.
The anemic content of Black History has been briefly reviewed. This review is brief because the material is scanty. Yet university departments hope to turn out specialists in this subject. How graduates who concentrated on Black Studies are supposed to take a respected place alongside scholars in other disciplines is left unanswered. It seems that the teaching of distorted Negro history is designed to combat racism. How fables and fallacies are supposed to end one type of error without creating another is also left unanswered.
It has become fashionable to suppress uncomfortable truths. Race science has been driven to the catacombs; constitutional precedents no longer rule the courts; religion has been replaced by a social gospel; schools indoctrinate rather than educate, and now it appears that history must become propaganda.
The White Citizens Councils also produced and distributed radio and TV programs to approximately 450 stations per week.
The White Citizen Councils were a powerful force fighting to preserve Jim Crow with all the political power and economic muscle these the deep south's White economic and professional elites could muster. They led the way for hate groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens that we see today.
