Joe Zivak’s Reviews > Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past > Status Update

She shows that the growth of conservative political power in Orange County was a gradual process requiring the activism of many engaged men and women who held coffee klatches, ran for local school boards, leafleted their neighbors, and organized campaigns for elected officials at all levels of government.

More accurately understood as persistent, not episodic, backlashes are the continuous—long-term and ongoing—attempt by white conservative reactionaries to stand in the way of Black people’s demands for equality. Indeed, it was this pattern of white opposition that made African American campaigns for equality necessary in the first place.