white supremacist

Examples of white supremacist in the following topics:

• The Transformed South

  • After the Civil War, the South was thrown into turmoil as many whites faced their former slaves as equals.
  • The fact that former slaves now held political and military power angered many whites, and this gave rise to movements such as the KKK and other white supremacist organizations.
  • Most white members of both the planter/business class and common farmer class of the South opposed black power and sought white supremacy.
  • His work defended some roles in opposing military oppression by the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) but denounced the Klan's violence.
  • Conservative reaction continued in both the North and South; the "white liners" movement to elect candidates dedicated to white supremacy reached as far as Ohio in 1875.

• The Spread of Segregation

  • Fearing black domination, southern whites resisted the freedmen's exercise of political power, .
  • White supremacist paramilitary organizations allied with the Democratic Party practiced intimidation, violence and assassinations to repress and prevent blacks exercising their civil and voting rights in elections from 1868 through the mid-1870s.
  • Black voting decreased markedly under such pressure, and white Democrats regained political control of southern legislatures and governors' offices in the 1870s.
  • In practice, these provisions, including white primaries, created a maze that blocked most African-Americans and many poor whites from voting in southern states for decades after the turn of the 20th century.
  • The origin of the phrase "Jim Crow" has often been attributed to "Jump Jim Crow," a song-and-dance caricature of blacks performed by white actor Thomas D.

• White Terror

  • "White terror" refers to white supremacy groups formed in the South in reaction to recently freed African-Americans after the Civil War.
  • After the Civil War, a number of white supremacist groups formed as a reaction to the recent liberation of African-American former slaves, who now competed for paying jobs and opportunities in the South.
  • The White League was a white paramilitary group started in 1874 that worked to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing.
  • Above the family is a man from the White League and the KKK shaking hands.
  • This is a white mans government.

• The Freed Slaves

  • White Democrats had regained political power in every Southern state.
  • These conservative, white, Democratic Redeemer governments legislated Jim Crow laws, which segregated black people from the white population, upheld constitutionally as "separate but equal" rights.
  • As a result, political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease.
  • Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate whites to vote.
  • White supremacist paramilitary organizations, allied with Southern Democrats, used intimidation, violence and assassinations to repress blacks and prevent them from exercising their civil rights in elections from 1868 until the mid-1870s.

• The Reconstruction Amendments

  • Though the amendment formally abolished slavery throughout the United States, factors such as Black Codes, white supremacist violence, and selective enforcement of statutes continued to subject some black Americans to involuntary labor, particularly in the South.
  • From 1890 to 1910, most black voters in the South were effectively disenfranchised by new state constitutions and state laws incorporating such obstacles as poll taxes and discriminatory literacy tests, from which white voters were exempted by grandfather clauses.
  • A system of whites-only primaries and violent intimidation by white groups also suppressed black participation.

• The Populist Movement

  • Based among poor, white cotton farmers in the South (especially North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas) and hard-pressed wheat farmers in the plains states (especially Kansas and Nebraska), it represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, railroads, and elites in general.
  • Watson of Georgia, openly talked of the need for poor blacks and poor whites to set aside their racial differences in the name of shared economic self-interest.
  • Prominent Populist Party leaders such as Marion Butler, a United States Senator from North Carolina, at least partially demonstrated a dedication to the cause of white supremacy, and there appears to have been some support for this viewpoint among the rank-and-file of the party's membership.
  • After 1900, Watson himself became an outspoken white supremacist and became the party's presidential nominee in 1904 and 1908, winning 117,000 and 29,000 votes.

• The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

  • The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v.
  • The massive presence of white students was also not reducing the amount of violence that SNCC suffered, but seemed to be increasing it.
  • For the Louisiana campaign to survive it had to rely on a local African-American militia called the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who used arms to repel white supremacist violence and police repression.
  • In Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael, one of SNCC's leaders, declared, "I'm not going to beg the white man for anything that I deserve, I'm going to take it.
  • A wave of inner city riots in black communities from 1964 through 1970 undercut support from the white community.

• The Role of Religion in the Civil Rights Movement

  • Social activism faced fierce repression from police, the White Citizens' Council, and the Ku Klux Klan.
  • Only a few churches defied the white-dominated status quo by affiliating with SCLC, and those that did risked economic retaliation, arson, and bombings.
  • Nightly marches to the Old Slave Market were attacked by white mobs, and when African Americans attempted to integrate "white-only" beaches they were assaulted by police who beat them with clubs.
  • Klansmen embraced Protestantism as an essential component of their white supremacist, anti-Catholic, and paternalistic formulation of American democracy and national culture.
  • Continuing disfranchisement of African Americans across the South meant that most could not serve on juries, which were all white.

• White Society in the South

  • Stephanie McCurry argues that yeomen were clearly distinguished from poor whites by their ownership of land.
  • The principle of white supremacy, accepted by almost all white southerners of all classes, made slavery seem legitimate, natural, and essential for a civilized society.
  • White racism in the South was sustained by official systems of repression such as the "slave codes" and elaborate codes of speech, behavior, and social practices illustrating the subordination of blacks to whites.
  • Serving as slave "patrollers" and "overseers" offered white southerners positions of power and honor.
  • Only a small minority of free white Southerners owned plantations in the antebellum era.

• "Poor Whites"

  • "Poor whites" were the lowest white class in the antebellum south; in spite of their poverty, most still supported the Confederacy.
  • In his study of Edgefield County, South Carolina, Orville Vernon Burton classified white society into three groups: the poor, the yeoman middle class (also called the plain folk of the Old South), and the elite.
  • However, Stephanie McCurry argues that yeomen were clearly distinguished from poor whites because yeoman owned land.
  • Wetherington (2005) argues that the plain folk (of Georgia) supported secession in the name of their families, homes, and notions of white liberty.
  • White supremacy and masculinity depended on slavery, which Lincoln's Republicans threatened.