Clive WebbRabble Rousers: The American Far Right in the Civil Rights Era. (Politics and Culture in the Twentieth‐Century South.) Athens: University of Georgia Press. 2010. Pp. xi, 301. $24.95

Extract

In recent years, David Chappell, Kevin Kruse, and George Lewis have followed in the footsteps of Numan Bartley and begun to analyze in depth the southern massive resistance movement that emerged in the wake of the Brown decision in 1954. For the most part, these historians have focused on mainstream segregationists and paid little attention to the white militants who openly advocated violent resistance to racial integration. Now Clive Webb, who previously explored black‐Jewish relations in the civil rights‐era South, has broadened and deepened our understanding of massive resistance by shining a spotlight on the racial extremists who, ironically, may have ultimately damaged and discredited the segregationist cause through their virulent rhetoric and violent actions.

Webb focuses on five individuals in particular. Bryant Bowles of the National Association for the Advancement of White People and John Kasper of the Seaboard White Citizens' Council mobilized grass‐roots resistance to school integration in Delaware, Virginia, and Tennessee. Rear Admiral John G. Crommelin repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) ran for public office in his home state of Alabama after he left active duty and participated in a network of far right organizations. Major General Edwin Walker, who had commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the Little Rock Crisis of 1957, later led the violent opposition to the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962. Both men also consorted with a cabal of retired senior military officers who flirted with the idea of overthrowing the government. Finally, J. B. Stoner spent six decades travelling the South and promoting (if not practicing) violence in the name of white supremacy.