On July 13, Stephanie Rolph presented “Hodding Carter III and The South Strikes Back” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
Originally published in 1959, Carter’s book explores the beginnings of the white Citizens’ Council in the Mississippi Delta and its battles over integration and voting rights. University Press of Mississippi has reissued the work with a new introduction by Rolph.
In The South Strikes Back, Carter presents a historical overview and traces the formation of the Council, its treatment of African Americans, and its impact on white communities across the state. He also examines trends working against the Council—the federal government’s efforts to improve voting rights for African Americans, economic growth within African American communities, and especially the fact that the Citizens’ Council was founded on the defense of segregation's status quo and dedicated to its preservation.
“The Citizens’ Council used economic boycotts, social pressure, and political influence to subdue its opponents and dominate the communities where it operated,” Rolph said. “But what Carter could not have anticipated was just how widely its ideology would be received.”
A reviewer for the Oakland Tribune newspaper wrote: “This is one of the most depressing, yet important, books that this reviewer has read in many years; for it is an analytical account of the angry, unreconstructed revolt of conservative southerners in Mississippi against the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision of 1954 …. Carter’s book is must reading for all who would understand one of this nation’s most pressing problems.”
Stephanie R. Rolph is associate professor of history at Millsaps College. She earned her BA in history from Millsaps College and her MA and PhD from Mississippi State University, both in U.S. history. Rolph is the immediate past president of the Mississippi Historical Society and author of Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council, 1954–1989.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi.
