*The White Citizens' Council was formed on this date in 1954. They were an associated network of white supremacist, extreme right organizations in the United States, concentrated in the American South.
They were also called the White Citizens' Councils. After 1956, the name was Citizens' Councils of America. With about 60,000 members across the United States and in the South, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of public schools following the 1954 US Supreme Court Brown v. B.O.E. ruling that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.
They also opposed voter registration efforts in the South, where most Blacks had been disenfranchised since the turn of the 20th century and integration of public facilities during the 1950s and 1960s. Members used intimidation tactics, including economic boycotts, firing people from jobs, propaganda, and violence against civil rights activists.
By the 1970s, following the passage of federal civil rights legislation and its enforcement by the federal government, the councils' influence had waned considerably. The councils' mailing lists and some of their board members found their way to the St. Louis-based Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1985.
