Historians have on the whole ignored the ideas of the segregationists
of
the 1950s and 1960s. They assume, apparently, that racism – which
historians have studied from every conceivable angle – is enough
to
explain how and why people fought to preserve a racist institution in a
specific time and place. The civil rights leaders of the 1950s and 1960s
did
not make that assumption: they attacked specific and concrete institutions,
hoping that the “hearts and minds” of southern racists might
give up
their racism after the institutions were destroyed. Segregationists
of the
1950s and 1960s, in turn, tried to defend those institutions, not just
politically, but culturally and intellectually as well. A full understanding
of the destruction of those institutions requires an understanding of the
way they were defended. Racism, after all, existed long before the specific
legal forms of segregation and disfranchisement were created – and
shows
every sign of outliving them. Historians who ignore the cultural and
intellectual defenses of those specific forms miss a crucial historical
question: why did segregationist arguments ultimately fail to inspire
the southern white population to defend those forms of racism successfully
?