Confederate Heritage/Citizens Councils

The cartoon to the left is from "The Citizens' Council" a white supremacist group of upper and middle class persons primarily in the South during the 1950s and 60s (page 4, Dec. 1958). The cartoon is a reference to the NAACP. The publication is full of lengthy arguments about the Constitution and States' Rights and other soundings of high principals, but the cartoons give it all away where the White Citizens' Council members are coming from. The publication is also full of Confederate flags and references to the Confederacy. In one poem the ghost of Robert E. Lee comes visiting to shame southerners to fight civil rights.

The publication also demolishes Shelby Foote's argument that the Confederate battleflag was misused by yahoos. The Citizens' Councils were led by the leaders of socity in the South and it is quite clear what Confederate heritage means to them.


Also it is interesting how the paper endlessly engages in victimhood, a strategy that is still embraced by Neo-Confederates.

You can see all the issues of the newspaper at the web site www.citizenscouncils.com and read the issues. You will find that many of the arguments against civil rights then have their echoes today.