Back in the good old days in the southern states of America, before we were driven into panic rooms by micro-aggressions, there were white citizens councils that would record in their minutes voting to have someone murdered. Such was their sense of impunity.
Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens’ Councils met openly and were seen as “pursuing the agenda of the Klan with the demeanour of the Rotary Club” by “unleashing a wave of economic reprisals against anyone, Black or white, seen as a threat to the status quo”. In Mississippi, the State Sovereignty Commission funded the Citizens’ Councils.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 broke the control of segregationists over their political and legal institutions. The racial segregation collapsed because it could no longer rely on Jim Crow laws and the private violence and boycotts through the White Citizens Councils which police turned a blind eye too when they were not actively involved.
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