Founded in 1954 in Indianola, Mississippi, the Citizens’ Council movement ran parallel to the Black liberation campaigns that defined the 1950s and 1960s, both nationally and globally. Its slogan, “States’ Rights, Racial Integrity,” persisted through some of the most defining events in American history. This presentation, based on Stephanie Rolph’s book, Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council, 1954-1989, tracks nearly 40 years of the organization’s existence and examines the unexpected ways that organized White resistance in Mississippi helped ignite a reinvestment in White supremacy that has left deep footprints on American political culture.
Stephanie Rolph is Associate Professor of History at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS. A scholar of southern history, her work focuses on the ways in which white supremacy and white resistance to the civil rights movement intersected with national political movements in the 1960s. Rolph’s work has appeared in The Right Side of the Sixties: Reexamining Conservatism’s Decade of Transformation (2012) and the Journal of Southern History. Her book, Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council, 1954-1989 (2018), was the recipient of the Book of the Year Prize from the Mississippi Historical Society. In 2019, Rolph was been recognized by the Mississippi Humanities Council as its 2019 Humanities Scholar and its Humanities Teacher of the Year for Millsaps College. A native of Jackson, she is a graduate of Millsaps College--where she completed her BA in history--and Mississippi State University--where she completed her PhD in 2009.