Southern governors and law enforcement officials often characterized these tactics as criminal and argued that the rise of the Civil Rights Movement was indicative of a breakdown of law and order. Fire departments regularly used powerful hoses to break up rallies supporting desegregation, and police force fully cracked down on marches throughout the South—often working with the Ku Klux Klan and other racial terror groups to lynch, torture, or imprison black people, especially black activists. Support of civil rights legislation was derided by Southern conservatives as merely “rewarding
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