Massive Resistance : Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction

"Massive Resistance" brings together ten essays that critically assess southern white resistance to school desegregation.

The collection examines, in close detail, the practice of massive resistance, revealing the ideological and tactical divisions that characterized the southern white response to civil rights protest, as well as the illusion of the union of racial moderates and extremists in what has been called a solid white South.

The essays also look at white resistance through gender issues, the wider context of international Cold War politics, the critical backlash against Brown, religious and theological bases of resistance, the events of Little Rock, private education as an alternative to desegregation, and the intellectual foundations of massive resistance.