In the 1960s, Mississippi was the heart of white southern
resistance to the civil-rights movement. To many, it was a
backward-looking society of racist authoritarianism and violence
that was sorely out of step with modern liberal America. White
Mississippians, however, had a different vision of themselves and
their country, one so persuasive that by 1980 they had become
important players in Ronald Reagan's newly ascendant Republican
Party.
In this ambitious reassessment of racial politics in the deep
South, Joseph Crespino reveals how Mississippi leaders
strategically accommodated themselves to the demands of
civil-rights activists and the federal government seeking to end
Jim Crow, and in so doing contributed to a vibrant conservative
countermovement. Crespino explains how white Mississippians linked
their fight to preserve Jim Crow with other conservative
causes--with evangelical Christians worried about liberalism
infecting their churches, with cold warriors concerned about the
Communist threat, and with parents worried about where and with
whom their children were schooled. Crespino reveals important
divisions among Mississippi whites, offering the most nuanced
portrayal yet of how conservative southerners bridged the gap
between the politics of Jim Crow and that of the modern Republican
South.
This book lends new insight into how white Mississippians gave
rise to a broad, popular reaction against modern liberalism that
recast American politics in the closing decades of the twentieth
century.
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