The Propaganda Media Campaign of the Citizens' Councils of America

• In Event: 476 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Paper Session. Racial Formation and Mobilization in Comparative-Historical Perspective

Abstract

This research examines right-wing grassroots opposition to civil rights reforms in the post-Second World War era. These groups developed a sophisticated propaganda media campaign that fused the long intellectual tradition of white supremacy with Cold War geopolitics. Sociologists who specialize in social movement research have completely ignored this important subject while historians have yet to benefit from a more systematic analysis of the social dynamics which defined the contentious politics of that period. This study focuses on the Citizens’ Council, which became the flagship segregationist organization of that period. Three major pieces of organizational propaganda media are analyzed: 1) the official paper of Citizens’ Council called, The Citizens’ Council (1955-1961); 2) a magazine journal called, The Citizen (1961-1979); and 3) a television and radio broadcast series known as Citizens’ Council Forum (1955-1966). In this research the goal is to understand what factors determined the way in which the Council deployed its segregationist frame argumentation. Can specific independent variables be identified that influenced how the Council framed the political issues relevant to its cause for collective action? I hypothesize that the Council’s propaganda rhetoric was mainly driven and shaped by geopolitical factors of varying scales: Southern (local and regional); national; and international. Because the Council aimed for national appeal however, it deployed its segregationist frame arguments largely in national terms, and in ways which reflected the mainstream political culture of American anti-communism.

Author

• Devon Alanzo Wright, Florida International University