White+Citizens+Council



The White Citizens' Council (WCC) was an American White surpremicist organization formed on July 11, 1954.After 1956, it was known as the Citizens' Councils of America. With about 60,000 members mostly in theSouth, the group was well known for its opposition to racial integration during the 1950s and 1960s. These local groups typically were a more middle and upper class membership than the Ku Klux Klan and, in addition to using violence and intimidation to counter civil rights goals, they wanted to economically and socially oppress African Americans. Citizens’ Councils would organize boycotts and protests, attend meetings to oppose school integration proceedings, pressure employers to fire African-Americans, refuse to serve blacks in stores and mount other similar campaigns. The Citizens’ Council was a monthly four page newspaper where b lack people, both American and African were often described as sexual predators or caricatured as African savages, cannibals who were incapable of self-control. The message of The Citizens’ Council was white supremacy. Eventually because of successful civil rights activism, such as the Montgomerybus boycott and subsequent legislation like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the the Citizens’ Councils exposed their failures Link