Author Description
Why Do White Supremacist Politics In America Remain So Powerful? Elizabeth Gillespie Mcrae Argues That The Answer Lies With White Women. Examining Racial Segregation From 1920s To The 1970s, Mothers Of Massive Resistance Explores The Grassroots Workers Who Maintained The System Of Racial Segregation And Jim Crow. For Decades In Rural Communities, In University Towns, And In New South Cities, White Women Performed Myriad Duties That Upheld White Over Black: Censoring Textbooks, Denying Marriage Certificates, Deciding On The Racial Identity Of Their Neighbors, Celebrating School Choice, Canvassing Communities For Votes, And Lobbying Elected Officials. They Instilled Beliefs In Racial Hierarchies In Their Children, Built National Networks, And Experimented With A Color-blind Political Discourse. Without These Mundane, Everyday Acts, White Supremacist Politics Could Not Have Shaped Local, Regional, And National Politics The Way It Did Or Lasted As Long As It Has. With White Women At The Center Of The Story, The Rise Of Postwar Conservatism Looks Very Different Than The Male-dominated Narratives Of The Resistance To Civil Rights. Women Like Nell Battle Lewis, Florence Sillers Ogden, Mary Dawson Cain, And Cornelia Dabney Tucker Publicized Threats To Their Jim Crow World Through Political Organizing, Private Correspondence, And Journalism. Their Efforts Began Before World War Ii And The Brown Decision And Persisted Past The 1964 Civil Rights Act And Anti-busing Protests. White Women's Segregationist Politics Stretched Across The Nation, Overlapping With And Shaping The Rise Of The New Right. Mothers Of Massive Resistance Reveals The Diverse Ways White Women Sustained White Supremacist Politics And Thought Well Beyond The Federal Legislation That Overturned Legal Segregation.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This work investigates how white women served as the primary grassroots architects and sustainers of white supremacist politics in the United States from the 1920s through the 1970s. Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, a historian specializing in the American South, utilizes extensive archival research, private correspondence, and journalism to argue that the maintenance of Jim Crow was not solely a male-dominated endeavor. She demonstrates that white women performed essential administrative and social functions—such as censoring textbooks and policing racial boundaries—that institutionalized racial hierarchies and facilitated the rise of postwar conservatism.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Analysis of grassroots political organizing by white women in rural and urban settings.
- Examination of the intersection between domestic life and the preservation of segregationist policies.
- Case studies of influential figures including Nell Battle Lewis, Florence Sillers Ogden, Mary Dawson Cain, and Cornelia Dabney Tucker.
- Documentation of the transition from overt segregationist rhetoric to color-blind political discourse.
Scope Limits
- The text focuses primarily on the activities of white women and does not provide an exhaustive history of the broader Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of activists of color.
- The analysis is concentrated on the American context and does not extend to comparative international studies of racial segregation.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Historians and political scientists frequently cite this work as a critical intervention that shifts the focus of segregationist history away from male-centric narratives. Readers often note the academic rigor and the unsettling clarity with which the author documents the mundane, everyday nature of systemic racism.
Page Count:
352
Publication Date:
2018-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190271728
ISBN-13:
9780190271725
History
Womens Studies
Civil Rights
American History
Sociology
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