Federal Law and Southern Order: Racial Violence and Constitutional Conflict in the Post-Brown SouthFederal Law and Southern Order, first published in 1987, examines the factors behind the federal government's long delay in responding to racial violence during the 1950s and 1960s. The book also reveals that it was apprehension of a militant minority of white racists that ultimately spurred acquiescent state and local officials in the South to protect blacks and others involved in civil rights activities. By tracing patterns of violent racial crimes and probing the federal government's persistent failure to punish those who committed the crimes, Michal R. Belknap tells how and why judges, presidents, members of Congress, and even Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials accepted the South's insistence that federalism precluded any national interference in southern law enforcement. Lulled into complacency by the soothing rationalization of federalism, Washington for too long remained a bystander while the Ku Klux Klan and others used violence to sabotage the civil rights movement, Belknap demonstrates. In the foreword to this paperback edition, Belknap examines how other scholars, in works published after Federal Law and Southern Order, have treated issues related to federal efforts to curb racial violence. He also explores how incidents of racial violence since the 1960s have been addressed by the state legal systems of the South and discusses the significance for the contemporary South of congressional legislation enacted during the 1960s to suppress racially motivated murders, beatings, and intimidation. |
Contents
TWO The Violent Aftermath of the Brown Decision | 27 |
THREE The Attack on Bombing | 53 |
FOUR Crisis Management in the Kennedy Administration | 70 |
FIVE The Problem of Protection | 106 |
SIX That Bloody Freedom Summer | 128 |
SEVEN The Price and Guest Cases | 159 |
EIGHT The South on Trial | 183 |
NINE A Federal Law | 205 |
TEN The Restoration of Southern Order | 229 |
Common terms and phrases
administration Alabama anti-civil rights violence April Atlanta Attorney August authorities Band of Brothers Barnett bill Birmingham bombing Burke Marshall Caldwell Civil Rights Act Civil Rights Division civil rights movement civil rights workers Cong Congress constitutional rights CORE Papers crime December Department of Justice desegregation Eisenhower Ervin Faubus February federal government File folder Fourteenth Amendment Freedom Riders Georgia Governor Guest Hoover Ibid indictment James Farmer January John Doar Johnson July June Justice Department Katzenbach killing klansmen Klux Klan Ku Klux Klan law and order law enforcement legislation lynching March Marshall Papers Memorandum ment Mississippi murder NAACP national government Negro Neshoba County October officers police President prosecution protection punish racial racist violence Ramsey Clark responsibility Robert Kennedy Schwerner section 241 Senate September SNCC SNCC Papers South southern Supreme Court telegram tion transcript of oral United Viola Liuzzo vote Washington WHCF White House York
Popular passages
Page 357 - Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974); Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Herbert G.