Rebecca Bruckmann, "Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation" (U Georgia Press, 2021)
Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation\xa0(U Georgia Press, 2021)\xa0offers a comparative sociocultural and spatial history of white supremacist women involved in massive resistance. The book focuses on segregationist grassroots activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Charleston, South Carolina from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Dr. Rebecca Br\xfcckmann combines theory and detailed case studies to interrogate the \u201croles, actions, self-understandings, and media representations\u201d of these segregationist women.\nDr. Br\xfcckmann argues that these women \u2013 motivated by an everyday culture of white supremacy \u2013 created performative spaces for their segregationist agitation in the public sphere to legitimize their actions. Unlike other studies of mass resistance that have focused on maternalism, Dr. Br\xfcckmann argues that women\u2019s invocation of motherhood was varied and primarily served as a tactical tool to continuously expand these women\u2019s spaces. Her book carefully differentiates the circumstances, tactics, and representations used in the creation of performative spaces by working-class, middle-class, and elite women engaged in massive resistance. Br\xfcckmann contrasts the transgressive \u201cstreet politics\u201d of working-class female activists in Little Rock and New Orleans with the more traditional political actions of segregationist, middle-class, and elite women in Charleston. While these women aligned white supremacist agitation with long-standing experience in conservative women\u2019s clubs (e.g., United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Daughters of the American Revolution), working-class women\u2019s groups (who lacked the economic, cultural, and social capital) chose consciously transgressive strategies, including violence, to elicit shock value and create states of emergency to further legitimize their actions and push for white supremacy. Dr. Br\xfcckmann\u2019s nuanced work of history uses scholarship from sociology, political science, law, and other relevant disciplines to demonstrate how \u201cinteractions between class and status concerns, race, space, and gender shaped these women\u2019s views and actions.\u201d\nDr.\xa0Rebecca Br\xfcckmann\xa0is an Associate Professor of History at Carleton College. Her research and teachings interrogate African American history, the transnational history of the Black Diaspora, Southern US history, White Supremacy, and gender.\nDaniela Lavergne assisted with this podcast.\nSusan Liebell\xa0is Dirk Warren '50 Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph\u2019s University in Philadelphia.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies