In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution

Politics and Society in Modern America

by Joseph Crespino

In the 1960s, Mississippi was the heart of white southern resistance to the civil-rights movement. To many, it was a backward-looking society of racist authoritarianism and violence that was sorely out of step with modern liberal America. White Mississippians, however, had a different vision of themselves and their country, one so persuasive that by 1980 they had become important players in Ronald Reagan's newly ascendant Republican Party.

In this ambitious reassessment of racial politics in the deep South, Joseph Crespino reveals how Mississippi leaders strategically accommodated themselves to the demands of civil-rights activists and the federal government seeking to end Jim Crow, and in so doing contributed to a vibrant conservative countermovement. Crespino explains how white Mississippians linked their fight to preserve Jim Crow with other conservative causes--with evangelical Christians worried about liberalism infecting their churches, with cold warriors concerned about the Communist threat, and with parents worried about where and with whom their children were schooled. Crespino reveals important divisions among Mississippi whites, offering the most nuanced portrayal yet of how conservative southerners bridged the gap between the politics of Jim Crow and that of the modern Republican South.

This book lends new insight into how white Mississippians gave rise to a broad, popular reaction against modern liberalism that recast American politics in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Genres: History, Politics, American History, Nonfiction, Race, 20th Century, Historical

384 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2007

Reviews

[Jim Gulley]

This book traces the evolution of Mississippi politics from one of massive resistance to racial integration in the 1950s and 1960s to becoming the laboratory for the conservative counterrevolution in the 1980s. Crespino argued that Mississippi conservatives pursued a more palatable, “color blind” conservatism built around limited government, states’ rights, law and order, opposition to federal programs, traditional values, and economic development. This rebranding let them preserve much of the old racial and class order while seeking investment, respectability, and alliance with national Republicans and sunbelt conservatives.

Crespino’s first theme considered the complexity and diversity of white Mississippians’ response to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Massive resistance, as led by the Citizens’ Council, eventually gave way to the relentless pressures of the nation’s judicial system and changing national politics. His second theme highlighted the complex intersections between white Mississippians’ religious and racial beliefs. This phenomenon was brought into specific relief during the controversies over school desegregation and the rapid establishment of private schools. Finally, the book argued that white Mississippians were not exceptional in post-World War 2 America, but served as a microcosm of the civil rights issues that plagued the country as a whole.

[Josh Valdez]

Enjoyed the look into Mississippi and how it handled the issue of race and conservatism but didn’t feel like it convinced me that the conservative movement of the South was fully able to distance itself from its racist elements