The idea that such opposition erupted whole cloth in the aftermath of Brown and ended with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts raised questions for me. This chronology focused on national legislation and for the most part on Southern governors, senators, and elected male officials. First, most scholarship offers a tight chronology of massive resistance-organized opposition to the Civil Rights movement-from 1954 after the Brown decision to 1964 or 1965. McRae: I was writing against three main trends in the scholarship. What historical narratives of segregation were you writing against?

PE: When I was writing my book on the 1920s Ku Klux Klan and White religious nationalism, I was arguing against particular historical narratives that claimed the Klan ended in 1930 and that somehow White supremacy ended then too. This March, McRae spoke to The Public Eye. They affirmed, defended, and praised segregation every day and birthed a particular White supremacist politics-which defends a racial hierarchy of White over Black in institutions, politics, and culture-that still resonates today.

In doing this, White women weren’t simply capitulating to men’s preferences under a patriarchal system rather, White women supported segregation because it benefited them. White women prove to be the “constant gardeners” of segregation by writing letters and lobbying local officials, by censoring textbooks for public schools and hosting essay contests, by policing racial boundaries of folks in their communities as overbearing neighbors and administrators, and by teaching children racial hierarchies that emphasized White over Black. A new book, Elizabeth Gillespie McRae’s Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy (Oxford, 2018), provides a different, more complicated story, carefully considering White women’s activism and defense of racial segregation from the 1920s through the ‘70s.įocusing on four White women from a variety of political affiliations, McRae documents their efforts to protect segregation from the threats of racial equality campaigns and so-called “White apathy.” Her book corrects previous histories of segregation that focus on Supreme Court decisions, federal law, leaders, and ideologues by examining how segregation is maintained primarily on the local level.

Media narratives continue to assume, against evidence, that women’s activism must be progressive by definition. Although historically, White women have supported the political, cultural, and social systems of White supremacy, there’s still a surprising level of confusion and shock when White women today do the same.

Elizabeth gillespie mcrae