Segregation's Constant Gardeners: How White Women Created and Defended Jim Crow Segregation

Women Series. Episode #3 of 4. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court released one of its most important and revolutionary rulings: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, usually better known as Brown v. Board. The ruling overturned the infamous ruling in Plessy v Ferguson, the 1896 ruling that established the ‘separate but equal’ precedent that made Jim Crow discrimination legal. The Brown ruling required that the federal government integrate public schools, bringing white and Black children together to receive equal education. While this story is often told as one part of a progressive and inspiring story about the Civil Rights Movement, a movement for rights that we now sort of all agree was good. But in reality, Brown v Board and the wider movement were met with extreme resistance from white supremacists. While white male politicians like George Wallace got the most attention, they were riding a wave of racism and resistance created and kept alive by white women. Today, for this episode of our latest women’s history series, we’re talking about the white women who fought back against the Civil Rights Movement.

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