Southern Fear: Civil Rights, the Cold War and the American South

This thesis examines the impact of Cold War on the development of state-level resistance to the civil rights movement. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, governments in southern states exploited growing foreign policy fears about the Soviet Union and Communism to discredit those who were seeking civil rights change in the American South. This thesis examines the way that these same states used the concept of state "sovereignty" as a euphemism for maintaining white supremacy. Moreover, the thesis explores how state "sovereignty commissions" in states like Mississippi and Alabama appropriated surveillance techniques developed by the federal government during the Cold War for use against individuals and organizations associated with the civil rights movement.;While the thesis is rooted in the history of the American South in the 1950s and 1960s, it also attempts to contextualize this tactic within a long lineage of repeated attempts to marginalize African Americans who have challenged the status quo within American society. To do this, the thesis traces the history of various "mutations" of discrimination including: the creation of Slave Codes in the early 19th century, the writing of Black Codes following the end of the Civil War, the development of Jim Crow at the turn of the 20th century, and the exploitation of African Americans in the criminal justice system. The thesis also connects recent resistance to Barack Obama to some of the specific strategies employed during the Cold War. By exploring the history of this tactic and connecting it to recent trends in American politics, the thesis creates a deeper understanding of the nature of political language in American history as well as the intense connection between purported foreign policy threats and domestic change.