Work in Progress: News You Can Use

Work in Progress is a recurring feature on CAMPAIGN TRAILS for paid subscribers.

I’m using it to share some of the more interesting materials I’ve uncovered in the past few years of research for my book-in-progress on the work of John Doar and the Civil Rights Division in the 1960s.

Last night while I was watching the NBA Playoffs, I started pulling on a thread in my current chapter and, an hour and a half later, I was able to prove something pretty cool.

Or as I explained on Bluesky:

So, as you likely know, the Citizens’ Councils were the white-collar version of the Klan. Its membership was made up of some of the “leading citizens” of the white South, a largely middle-class and upper-class group who thought the Klan was made up of white trash and who found their violence counterproductive. (Remember the movie “Mississippi Burning”? Stephen Tobolowsky was the Citizens’ Council guy.)

Anyway, it’s common knowledge, then and now, that the Citizens’ Councils largely orchestrated the campaign of “massive resistance” to court-ordered desegregation in the South. In some states, it was pretty direct — Gov. Ross Barnett in Mississippi was practically a CC creation and was “guided” behind the scenes by its leader, Rasputin style — while in others it was murkier.

I’m writing about the lead up to the Selma voting rights campaign right now, and dealing with all the considerable litigation that the Civil Rights Division had been waging there years before MLK’s protests.

One of the first lawsuits the Kennedy administration brought on voting rights discrimination came against the registrars of Dallas County (Selma’s home), in April 1961. As soon as they brought the suit, though, the registrar resigned his post, which led the District Court judge to rule a year later that all the evidence the CRD had compiled against him personally was useless. They’d have to find evidence about the new board.

So, as I’m writing this, I know new three-man board was appointed in the spring of 1961. I’ve got their names, so it’s pretty easy to search online records — especially the digitized collections of local Alabama newspapers at Newspapers.com — and find some details about these guys. I learn that two of the three, at least, were involved in Citizens’ Council activities. One was a judge in a CC essay contest on “why segregation must be preserved,” which seems to indicate membership in the group but definitely confirms sympathy. And another was actually the former head of the Dallas County Citizens’ Councils, and then a leader in the state organization too. OK, that’s pretty good, I can now show how the local board embodied the larger concerns of the Citizens Council.

But there’s still the question of intent. Was this an accident, or were these men put there specifically to toe the CC line?

The news stories on this all use the passive voice — the men “were appointed” — and as any historian will tell you, the passive voice always demands some follow-up questions. Appointed by whom? Appointed for what reason?

So I started pulling on this thread, but first between commercial breaks and then just throughout the game, trying to figure out the connection here.