Joe T. Patterson and the White South's Dilemma by Robert E Luckett

Joe T. Patterson and the White South's Dilemma by Robert E Luckett

As Mississippi's attorney general from 1956 to 1969, Joe T. Patterson led the legal defense for Jim Crow in the state. He was inaugurated for his first term two months before the launch of the Sovereignty Commission - charged ""to protect the sovereignty of Mississippi from encroachment thereon by the federal government"" - which made manifest a century-old states' rights ideology couched in the rhetoric of massive resistance. Despite the dubious legal foundations of that agenda, Patterson supported the organization's mission from the start and served as an ex-officio leader on its board for the rest of his life. Patterson was also a card-carrying member of the segregationist Citizens' Council and, in his own words, had ""spent many hours and driven many miles advocating the basic principles for which the Citizens' Councils were originally organized."" Few ever doubted his Jim Crow credentials. That is until September 1962 and the integration of the University of Mississippi by James Meredith. That fall Patterson stepped out of his entrenchment by defying a circle of white power brokers, but only to a point. His seeming acquiescence came at the height of the biggest crisis for Mississippi's racist order. Yet even after the Supreme Court decreed that Meredith must enter the university, Patterson opposed any further desegregation and despised the federal intervention at Ole Miss. Still he faced a dilemma that confronted all white southerners: how to maintain an artificially elevated position for whites in southern society without resorting to violence or intimidation. Once the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Meredith v. Fair, the state attorney general walked a strategic tightrope, looking to temper the ruling's impact without inciting the mob and without retreating any further. Patterson and others sought pragmatic answers to the dilemma of white southerners, not in the name of civil rights but to offer a more durable version of white power. His finesse paved the way for future tactics employing duplicity and barely yielding social change while deferring many dreams.

The dilemma was how to protect segregation without breaking the law, and it was the job of Mississippi attorney general Joe TPatterson to figure out how to do both. Luckett's volume is one of the most intricate studies so far of what scholars are calling 'practical segregation,' the effort to preserve the privileges of white southerners without harsh language, violence, openly racist organizations and the bad publicity they created, or outright opposition to the federal government. This book is full of surprises, and it shows what scholars can accomplish by studying conflicts over the methods of preserving white supremacy."" - Ted Ownby, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.

""Luckett's work is invaluable in revealing the more complex story of white resistance to black advancement across the South and its formative role in conservatism nationally, with legacies in today's political climate. His arguments allow those who strive for equality to develop more nuanced strategies for positive social change and reveal the challenges faced by activists whose opponents are willing to accommodate some measure of progress in order to maintain the white supremacist social order. It should be required reading for all of us."" - Susan M. Glisson, executive director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation

Robert E. Luckett Jr, Madison, Mississippi, USA is assistant professor of history and director of the Margaret Walker Center for the Study of the African-American Experience at Jackson State University. His research has appeared in The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi (University Press of Mississippi), as well as in numerous journal articles.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781496809551
ISBN 10	1496809556
Title	Joe T. Patterson and the White South's Dilemma
Author	Robert E Luckett
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University Press of Mississippi
Year published	2016-10-30
Number of pages	312
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.