DEFENDERS OF INEQUALITY: SEGREGATIONIST PROFILES

The elected officials, ministers, writers, and counter-activists who led widespread white opposition to racial equality during the civil rights era followed in the tradition of earlier generations of American leaders who used law, politics, intimidation, and violence to maintain white supremacy. After the Brown decision, that enduring common cause inspired collective action among white citizens in many parts of the country, vaulting new leaders to national prominence and into powerful positions that often outlasted the movement itself. By remembering the names, faces, and words of segregationist leaders, we can better recognize their power and influence— then and now.

Strom Thurmond, 1902-2003
U.S. Senator, South Carolina
“[A]ll the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.”

Leander Perez, 1891-1969
Judge and District Attorney, Louisiana
“Don’t wait for your daughters to be raped by these Congolese. Don’t wait until the burr-heads are forced into your schools. Do something about it now.”

James F. Byrnes, 1882-1972
U.S. Senator and Governor, South Carolina; Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
“This is a white man’s country, and will always remain a white man’s country.”

George C. Wallace, 1919-1998
Governor, Alabama
“I say…segregation now…segregation tomorrow…segregation forever.” Eugene Talmadge, 1888-1946 Governor, Georgia “The South loves the Negro in his place, but his place is at the back door.”

Theodore Bilbo, 1877-1947
U.S. Senator and Governor, Mississippi
“It is essential to the perpetuation of our Anglo-Saxon civilization that white supremacy be maintained and to maintain our civilization there is only one solution, and that is either by segregation within the United States, or by deportation of the entire negro race.”

Thomas Pickens Brady, 1903-1973
Justice, Mississippi Supreme Court
“You can dress a chimpanzee, housebreak him, and teach him to use a knife and fork, but it will take countless generations of evolutionary development, if ever, before you can convince him that a caterpillar or a cockroach is not a delicacy. Likewise the social, political, economical, and religious preferences of the Negro remain close to the caterpillar and the cockroach. . .”

Jesse Helms, 1921-2008
U.S. Senator, North Carolina
“The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights.”

Bob Jones, 1883-1968
Evangelist, South Carolina
“If we would just listen to the Word of God and not try to overthrow God’s established order, we would not have any trouble. God never meant for America to be a melting pot to rub out the line between the nations. That was not God’s purpose for this nation.”

I. Beverly Lake, 1906-1996
Justice, North Carolina Supreme Court
“If we must choose between a generation of inferior education and the amalgamation of our races into a mix-blooded whole, let us choose inferior education since that is an evil which another generation can correct, while miscegenation is a tragedy which can never be undone.”

White opposition to racial equality was led by mainstream, popular elected officials.