Reviews
"Clive Webb meticulously documents how white supremacists tried to crush democratic rights in the name of freedom in the Cold War era, their racial terrorism encouraged by mainstream conservatives whose coded racist rhetoric pushed working-class whites to vote and act against their own self interests. Be prepared to be greatly disturbed by this chronicle of a continuing problem in American history."
—Michael Honey, author of Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign
“Webb is a talented historian who is not afraid to tackle big and difficult questions. In Rabble Rousers, he introduces a distinctive and strikingly new approach to the history of militant segregationists. The result is a major contribution to our understanding of the post–World War II South.”
"Webb's carefully argued and well researched work certainly begins to explore a new angle of the civil rights era that is in need of reexamination."
—Southern Historian
"In his well-documented analysis, Webb argues that these five rabble-rousers ultimately did more to further the cause of civil rights than hurt it. Webb's book is a compelling one, not least because the reader is drawn to see parallels between the past and present throughout the book. In the end, Webb's claim that the five extremists profiled here indicate a deeper problem in the American political culture is convincing–both by the evidence itself and by Webb's very nicely written interpretation of it."
—Jenny Irons, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
"Drawing on a wealth of primary materials, Clive Webb has produced an ambitious, insightful, and dispassionate study of extreme opponents to the U.S. Supreme Court's game-changing—and for many white southerners, appalling—decision in 1954 ordering school desegregation. . . .Rabble Rousers is a fine, if chilling, book and illuminates a repugnant aspect of civil rights resistance."
—Bruce J. Dierenfield, Journal of Southern History
"Adds significantly to our knowledge of the far Right in the civil rights era. . . . Webb has performed a real service for the profession by wading through documents, speeches, and pamphlets that others might not want to touch, let alone analyze. Certainly it is difficult to read these racist, fascist, and antisemitic claims and not come away with a deep sense of disgust and revulsion, combined with a renewed appreciation for the courage and conviction of those who opposed them."
—American Historical Review
Description
These extremist whites are caricatured as ineffectual members of the lunatic fringe. Civil rights activists, however, saw them for what they really were: calculating, dangerous opponents prepared to use terrorism in their stand against reform. To dismiss white militants is to underestimate the challenge they posed to the movement and, in turn, the magnitude of civil rights activists’ accomplishments. The extremists helped turn massive resistance into a powerful political phenomenon. While white southern elites struggled to mobilize mass opposition to racial reform, the militants led entire communities in revolt.
Rabble Rousers turns traditional top-down models of massive resistance on their head by telling the story of five far-right activists—Bryant Bowles, John Kasper, Rear Admiral John Crommelin, Major General Edwin Walker, and J. B. Stoner—who led grassroots rebellions. It casts new light on such contentious issues as the role of white churches in defending segregation, the influence of anti-Semitism in southern racial politics, and the divisive impact of class on white unity. The flame of the far right burned brilliantly but briefly. In the final analysis, violent extremism weakened the cause of white southerners. Tactical and ideological tensions among massive resisters, as well as the strength and unity of civil rights activists, accelerated the destruction of Jim Crow.
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Cloth |
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Paper List price: $24.95 978-0-8203-3577-3 05/15/2010 |
Clive Webb is a reader in North American history at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Fight against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights, coauthor of Race in the American South: From Slavery to Civil Rights, and editor of Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction. His forthcoming book (coauthored with William D. Carrigan) is Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848 to 1928.
