“You heard of the Citizens’ Councils?” Mississippi governor Haley Barbour said in an interview with the conservative Weekly Standard. “Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders.”
For those of you who are wondering, the Citizens' Councils were generally an offshoot of the whites-only Chamber of Commerce (blacks weren't allowed, they had their own Black Chamber of Commerce) that were formed in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education to resist school integration. They generally controlled the (whites-only) government via their purse strings too. They are the goons who put the Little Rock police department outside of Little Rock High to stop black students from attending and when that failed, set up the lynch mobs at Little Rock High and Mississippi State that required the U.S. military to escort black students onto campus, as well as the goons who later set up the all-white "Christian" private schools so that their children wouldn't have to attend school with "those" people (people who, like, weren't like them -- i.e., inbred racist bigots).
In short, Mr. Barbour, yes, they were like the KKK, in that they organized state and private violence against black people -- *AND* an organization of (white) town leaders. The two aren't mutually exclusive, y'know. I should know. I was there. You were too. Except I despise bigots while you, Mr. Barbour, apparently think they're heros. Go figure
-- Badtux the Southern Penguin
