Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy

[xoxodede]

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.

 

[Afro]

White women hit the ground running and no one was paying attention to them.

Makes sense that they would do the work from the homefront and in the backseat.

Yet they still attack each (males and females) so they only remain tied together through mutual hate and to keep the status quo

 

[get these nets]

Little Rock,Arkansas

fukkin devils

 

[xoxodede]

Little Rock,Arkansas

fukkin devils

She calls these women the "constant gardeners of segregation" and the “female foot soldiers of the Jim Crow south.”


1960: Federal Marshals escort Gail Etienne to McDonogh, the first school to integrate in the city on November 14.

1960: Mrs. James Gabrielle, a white mother, walks home with her daughter and police escorts after the first day at an integrated Frantz, despite the rage and jeers of others engaged in a racial boycott.

 

[get these nets]

She calls these women the "constant gardeners of segregation" and the “female foot soldiers of the Jim Crow south.”


1960: Federal Marshals escort Gail Etienne to McDonogh, the first school to integrate in the city on November 14.

1960: Mrs. James Gabrielle, a white mother, walks home with her daughter and police escorts after the first day at an integrated Frantz, despite the rage and jeers of others engaged in a racial boycott.

Thank you. I was more aware of Ruby Bridges than the Black girls who integrated MDonough.

White women were largely given a pass by historians when it came to issues of racism in America. That seems to be shifting. Between this book, and the book about female slavers/plantations owners.....the chickens are coming to roost on the "daughters of the confederacy" and their grandmothers. Good.

 

[Akata Man Bromo]

 

[Danktoker94]

Good thread

 

[Ziploc]

In colonies throughout the diaspora the role white women played during slavery is well known.From the cruelty some displayed through their envy of black women cause they had children and sex with their men and the strong character they showed infuriated them.Many stories of Portugese,Spanish,French and British wives of plantantion owners that tortured and killed slaves are well documented.The women were just as and sometimes even more savage then the men.Susanna du Plessis is one of the most well known.She was a two time divorced white women that became the face of evil when it came ot the mistreatment of slaves.The name of the plantation she married into was "Envy and Regret"and she lived up to that name. One of the stories most people know is the one where she cut off the breasts off a mulatto slave cause she caught her husband,Frederik Cornelis Stolkert lusting after the beautiful light skinned black girl.She cut her breasts off ,cooked them for her husband and served them to him.She also drowned a baby with her own hands from a field girl cause the baby would not stop crying and it's wailing bothered her afternoon nap.She also had the prettiest field girls work the most demanding jobs so her husband would not notice them or she just arranged for them to have "accidents",like losing a limb or getting boiling water poured on their bodies.She died oct 6th 1795,childless and seperated from her husband.

 

[Counter Racist Male]

Thank you. I was more aware of Ruby Bridges than the Black girls who integrated MDonough.

White women were largely given a pass by historians when it came to issues of racism in America. That seems to be shifting. Between this book, and the book about female slavers/plantations owners.....the chickens are coming to roost on the "daughters of the confederacy" and their grandmothers. Good.

+

 

[Neuromancer]

The truth they hide.

 

[fairfax12]

#whitewomendoitbetter