Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948-1968

by Jeff Woods

At the height of the cold war, southern segregationists exploited the reigning mood of anxiety by linking the civil rights movement to an international Communist conspiracy. Jeff Woods tells a gripping story of fervent crusaders for racial equality swept into the maelstrom of the South's siege mentality, of crafty political opportunists who played upon white southerners' very real fear of Communists, and of a people who saw lurking enemies and detected red propaganda everywhere. In their strange double identity as both defiant Confederate flag-wavers fiercely protecting regional sovereignty and as American superpatriots, many southerners stood ready to defend against subversives be they red or black.
Concentrating on the phenomenon at its most intense period, Woods makes vivid the fearful synergy that developed between racist forces and the anti-Communist cause, reveals the often illegal means used to wash the movement red, and documents the gross waste of public funds in pursuing an almost nonexistent threat. Though ultimately unsuccessful in convincing Americans outside of Dixie that the civil rights protests were controlled by Moscow, the southern red scare forced movement activists to distance themselves from the Marxist elements in their midst -- thereby gaining the sympathy of the American people while losing the support of some of their most passionate antiracist campaigners.
A product of vast archival research and the latest literature on this increasingly popular subject, this is the first book to consider the southern red scare as a unique regional phenomenon rather than an offshoot of McCarthyism or massive resistance. Addressing the fundamental struggle of Americans to balance liberty and security in an atmosphere of racial prejudice and ideological conflict, it will be equally compelling for students of civil rights, southern history, the cold war, and American anti-Communism.

Genres: History, African American

282 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2003

Reviews

[Rebecca Dobrinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeff Woods provides his readers with a breath of fresh air in Black Struggle Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948-1968. Rather than rehashing a number of points that have been drilled into the heads of history students over the years, Woods coherently brings together two intersecting paths and tells the story of how segregation and anti-Communism came together in the effort of the South’s Old Guard to maintain an antiquated way of life. He tells the story in a compelling way and brings his story from its beginnings after World War II to its culmination in the Civil Rights legislation and to its eventual demise with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the election of Richard Nixon.

The stories of Southern segregationists are well known, but the relationship between the anti-Communist movement and segregation are much less so. Woods is able to demonstrate how integrated they were. Segregationists were able to use the heightened paranoia of McCarthyism to advocate for the status quo. By accusing the leaders of local and national Civil Rights organizations of Communist ties, segregationists fed into the unease and patriotism of white Southerners. This, in turn, helped to incite a wide variety of legal, legislative, police, and ultimately violent reactions to those fighting for Civil Rights.

Interestingly, the segregationists fought decisions like Brown v Board of Education and Eisenhower’s Civil Rights legislation by proclaiming that the federal government was trying to infringe on the sovereignty of states’ rights while enforcing Jim Crow laws that infringed on the rights of a large population within their own states. By controlling what African-Americans could and could not do, Southern states were acting like a Communist, totalitarian government instead of the democratic defenders of freedom they proclaimed to be.

Woods shows his readers how, long after the McCarthy-ites and other red baiters gave up on the Communist hunt, segregationists carried the torch well beyond what is considered the end of the McCarthy era. This grasping at the out-of-style ideologies of the anti-Communist era is similar to the South continuing to grasp at the fictitious ideologies that the antebellum era was one of civility and the “good old days.”

This reader agrees with the excerpt written by Anthony Badger on the back cover of the book, “Woods has produced an extremely valuable addition to our understanding of segregationist strategy and ideology.” One can only imagine the powerhouse the South could have become had they invested this energy in something positive rather than in trying to keep the ghosts of their antebellum ancestors alive.