White Citizens' Councils

BY VARIOUS NAMES, this white supremacist organization persisted from the mid-1950s through the beginning of the 21st century. In the aftermath of the Brown decision of May 1954 (beginning desegregation in American schools), Robert B. Patterson of Indianola, Mississippi, formed the first Citizens' Council in Greenwood, Mississippi, on July 11, 1954. The council's primary goal was the preservation of segregation regardless of Brown. In 1956, Patterson wrote that to him integration was one with totalitarianism, communism, and darkness while segregation was American freedom of association, states' rights, and the survival of the white race. The councils were to be the more civilized alternative to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), what the journalist Hodding Carter referred to as the “uptown KKK.” The Mississippi legislature censured Carter in 1955 for his criticism of the councils.

During the year after the desegregation decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, hundreds of Citizens' Councils arose in the south. A November Citizens' Council pamphlet read in part, “The Citizens' Council is the South's answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated! We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of six centuries. … If we are bigoted, prejudiced, un-American etc., so were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and other illustrious forebears who believed in segregation. We choose the old paths of our founding fathers and refuse to appease anyone, even the internationalists.”

The council examined local candidates for elections to make sure they were correct on the issues of African American voting and integration. The local council also coordinated economic pressures brought to ensure conformity. The typical council had only one or two dozen regular members, and most of them came from the community's elite: businessmen, politicians, lawyers, and large-scale planters. They eschewed the titles and structure so popular with the Klans. There were no Klaverns and Kleagles in the Citizens' Councils. A council had four committees. Information and education set out to ensure that both white and black understood the virtues of segregation and the perils of integration. The other committees were membership and finance, legal, and political. The councils met briefly in informal settings. They established their plans and set the next meeting. They used no letterhead, no literature, no offices, nothing tangible to identify them.

The councils left the violence and the recruitment of lower-class whites to the Klans. The Citizens' Councils looked down on the KKK, but the KKK was convenient for handling the weightier tasks: cross burnings, demonstrations, and other racists actions. Within 13 months, in August 1955, there were over 60,000 members in 253 councils, not solely in the south. A year later, there were councils in 30 states. The state councils affiliated under the Citizens' Councils of America (CCA) were committed to racial separation and states' rights in matters of education, marriage, public morals, [Page 944]and general good order. The CCA was formed in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1956 at a convention representing Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas (which had the Oklahoma proxy), and Virginia. The CCA was headquartered first at Greenwood and later at Jackson, Mississippi. The executive secretary was Robert B. Patterson.

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