"At the height of the cold war, southern segregationists exploited the reigning mood of anxiety by linking
the civil rights movement to an international Communist conspiracy. Jeff Woods tells a gripping story of fervent
crusaders for racial equality swept into the maelstrom of the South's siege mentality, of crafty political opportunists
who played upon white southerners' very real fear of Communists, and of a people who saw lurking enemies and detected
red propaganda everywhere. In their strange double identity as both defiant Confederate flag-wavers fiercely protecting
regional sovereignty and as American superpatriots, many southerners stood ready to defend against subversives
be they red or black." "Concentrating on the phenomenon at its most intense period, Woods makes vivid
the fearful synergy that developed between racist forces and the anti-Communist cause, reveals the often illegal
means used to wash the movement red, and documents the gross waste of public funds in pursuing an almost nonexistent
threat. Though ultimately unsuccessful in convincing Americans outside of Dixie that the civil rights protests
were controlled by Moscow, the southern red scare forced movement activists to distance themselves from the Marxist
elements in their midst - thereby gaining the sympathy of the American people while losing the support of some
of their most passionate antiracist campaigners." A product of vast archival research and the latest literature
on this increasingly popular subject, this is the first book to consider the southern red scare as a unique regional
phenomenon rather than an offshoot of McCarthyism or massive resistance. Addressing the fundamental struggle of
Americans to balance liberty and security in an atmosphere of racial prejudice and ideological conflict, it will
be equally compelling for students of civil rights, southern history, the cold war, and American anti-Communism.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Red and Black
2 Designed to Harass
3 Little HUACs and Little FBIs
4 Conspiracy So Immense
5 Black, White, and Red All Over
6 The Southern Red Scare and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
7 The Southern Red Scare and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
8 Black Power, Red Scare
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
