Religious Ideas of the Segregationists

Abstract

Historians have on the whole ignored the ideas of the segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s. They assume, apparently, that racism – which historians have studied from every conceivable angle – is enough to explain how and why people fought to preserve a racist institution in a specific time and place. The civil rights leaders of the 1950s and 1960s did not make that assumption: they attacked specific and concrete institutions, hoping that the “hearts and minds” of southern racists might give up their racism after the institutions were destroyed. Segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s, in turn, tried to defend those institutions, not just politically, but culturally and intellectually as well. A full understanding of the destruction of those institutions requires an understanding of the way they were defended. Racism, after all, existed long before the specific legal forms of segregation and disfranchisement were created – and shows every sign of outliving them. Historians who ignore the cultural and intellectual defenses of those specific forms miss a crucial historical question: why did segregationist arguments ultimately fail to inspire the southern white population to defend those forms of racism successfully ?