White Citizens’ Council Term Analysis

A segregationist group that, along with the Central High Mothers’ League, led the opposition against the Little Rock Nine’s integration of Central High School. Citizens’ Councils formed throughout the United States in direct response to Brown v. Board of Education. Members of the group believed that black people were inferior to white people and should remain separate. They promoted their racist ideology through various media, including weekly television and radio programs. Some states sponsored promotional films from the Council which illustrated the supposed benefits of segregation. Though the Citizens’ Councils viewed themselves as a less extremist group than the Ku Klux Klan, they, too, resorted to violent intimidation and spying. The Council was especially successful in Mississippi where it had the support of the white supremacist senator and plantation owner, James O. Eastland. The White Citizens’ Council lives on today under a new name. They currently call themselves the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that claims to espouse the anti-immigrant and anti-civil rights concerns of European Americans. The Council of Conservative Citizens has chapters all over the South.