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A review by kevin_shepherd
Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae
4.0
“. . . viewing schools as an extension of their home and a place where they wielded particular authority, many white segregationist women claimed that because school integration eroded their ability to secure the benefits of white supremacy for their children, it compromised their ability to be good mothers.”
Elizabeth Gillespie McRae’s Mothers of Mass Resistance is a history lesson on the effects of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka which established that state laws mandating racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional. In backlash, many white christian women, both in the north and the south, became a conduit for de facto segregation in defiance of federal law.
Much like slavery, the racial segregation of schools was couched as a “states rights” issue, circumventing the distasteful tags of white supremacy and white superiority. The work of white segregationist women on the ground eroded the power of Brown vs Board of Education and hampered or inhibited school integration for years.
Lily White Impetus
While conservative male legislators sought to resist desegregation “by all legal means available,” white southern women were much less constrained. They believed they had a gendered responsibility “to protect their children from Negroes,” and they said so in no uncertain terms.
McRae’s chronicle is filled with examples of privileged white women doing horrible things. It sickens me to read about the depths of depravity they would stoop to in order to protect their unjust privileges—but it does not surprise me. There is a lot here from 1954 that is dishearteningly familiar in 2024.
“Southern whites cannot walk, talk, sing, conceive of laws or justice, think of sex, love, the family or freedom without responding to the presence of negroes.” -Ralph Ellison, 1964
Elizabeth Gillespie McRae’s Mothers of Mass Resistance is a history lesson on the effects of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka which established that state laws mandating racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional. In backlash, many white christian women, both in the north and the south, became a conduit for de facto segregation in defiance of federal law.
Much like slavery, the racial segregation of schools was couched as a “states rights” issue, circumventing the distasteful tags of white supremacy and white superiority. The work of white segregationist women on the ground eroded the power of Brown vs Board of Education and hampered or inhibited school integration for years.
Lily White Impetus
While conservative male legislators sought to resist desegregation “by all legal means available,” white southern women were much less constrained. They believed they had a gendered responsibility “to protect their children from Negroes,” and they said so in no uncertain terms.
McRae’s chronicle is filled with examples of privileged white women doing horrible things. It sickens me to read about the depths of depravity they would stoop to in order to protect their unjust privileges—but it does not surprise me. There is a lot here from 1954 that is dishearteningly familiar in 2024.
“Southern whites cannot walk, talk, sing, conceive of laws or justice, think of sex, love, the family or freedom without responding to the presence of negroes.” -Ralph Ellison, 1964