NOTICE! TO ALL WHITE CITIZENS GREETINGS: STOP BUYING FORD CARS AND TRUCKS AND OTHER FORD PRODUCTS.[caption title and first lines of text]

[White Supremacy]: [Louisiana]

Verlag: [New Orleans, 1966

Beschreibung

Handbill, 9 x 6 inches (22 3/4 x 15 1/4 cm). Tanned, else fine. An anti-integration circular distributed by the White Supremacist "Citizens' Council of Greater New Orleans," imploring members to "STOP Buying FORD CARS and TRUCKS and other Ford Products" in response to the Ford Foundation's increased support for Civil Rights organizations. The first Citizens' Councils, sometimes described as the "uptown" or "white-collar Klan," were organized in Mississippi in response to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Employing tactics including political campaigns, boycotts, voter intimidation, and establishing private "segregation schools," these groups opposed all integration efforts and quickly spread throughout the rest of the South as a legal outlet for middle-class Whites to organize in opposition to the Civil Rights movement. Outside of Mississippi, Citizens' Councils were particularly active in Louisiana. The Louisiana chapter's leaders included major political figures (such as Joe Waggoner), and found considerable success; in 1956, they were instrumental in passing a law which codified Jim Crow practice and mandated segregation in all aspects of public life. The present notice was likely issued by the Citizens' Council of Greater New Orleans after the Ford Foundation changed gears in the mid-1960s, with new president McGeorge Bundy spearheading a massive push for philanthropic donations to Civil Rights organizations. While the Foundation restricted its early donations to "safe," well-established organizations such as the National Urban League and the NAACP, their grants to Civil Rights groups between the years 1965 and 1970 numbered well into the tens of millions of dollars. Predictably, this activity was not received well by White supremacist groups such as the Citizens' Councils. Rachel Wimpee writes that "As Ford entered the field, even modestly and moderately, controversy ensued. Many white supremacists called for a boycott of Ford automobiles - conflating the independent foundation with the Motor company. Hate mail poured in, and Ford automobile dealers were outraged." The Ford Foundation's archives in fact contain an entire folder of complaints about the Ford Foundation forwarded from the Ford Motor Company in 1966-67 alone. Either by falsely assuming a connection between the two or simply not knowing the difference, this circular was born out of precisely that misunderstanding. The bold lettering asks all White citizens to boycott the Ford Motor Company, claiming that "For years and years a considerable portion of the profits from the sale of Ford cars, trucks and other Ford products have been funneled into tax free foundations. MILLIONS and MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars of Ford profits have been distributed to integration and civil rights organizations to fight the white people of the SOUTH, by forcing them to associate with negroes." It concludes by stating that "It is time to dry up at least one source of the money that is being used to destroy our Southern way of life. DON'T BUY A FORD EVER AGAIN." In true community organization style, a note at the bottom tells readers where they can write to request more copies. OCLC locates seven copies of this circular, though with a suggested date of 1953 (before the Citizens' Council of Greater New Orleans was founded). We additionally locate a copy in the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and another version, with a 1966 news article reprinted on the verso, is recorded at the University of California at Davis. A rare piece of ephemera, documenting one of many examples of misguided White supremacist backlash at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Rachel Wimpee, "Funding a Social Movement: The Ford Foundation and Civil Rights, 1965- 1970" in RE:SOURCE (online). OCLC 26755669. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers WRCAM62485

Bibliografische Details

Titel: NOTICE! TO ALL WHITE CITIZENS GREETINGS: ...

Verlag: [New Orleans

Erscheinungsdatum: 1966