Citizens' Councils

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The Citizens' Councils (also known as White Citizen's Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash against the US Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The first was formed on July 11, 1954 in Indianola, Mississippi. The name was changed to the Citizens' Councils of America in 1956, when the organization's influence grew beyond Mississippi. With about 60,000 members across the Southern United States, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial desegregation of public schools: the logical conclusion of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The Councils also worked to oppose voter registration efforts in the South (where most African Americans had been disenfranchised since the late 19th century) and desegregation of public facilities in general during the 1950s and 1960s. Members employed tactics such as economic boycotts, unjustified termination of employment, propaganda, and outright violence. By the early 1970s, the influence of the Councils had waned considerably due to the passage of federal civil rights legislation. The councils' mailing lists and some of their board members found their way to the St. Louis–based Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1985.