The first Citizens' Council (also known as the White Citizens' Council) was formed in Indianola, Mississippi, following the United States Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which struck down segregation in public schools. White businessmen, planters, and professionals organized the group to prevent the court's ruling from taking hold in Mississippi. Thomas Pickens Brady, a circuit court judge and Citizens' Council leader, published a handbook entitled Black Monday outlining the group's goals, including the abolition of public schools, nullification of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and establishment of a separate black state. The publication of this handbook inspired many Mississippians to join the Citizens' Council movement.

Other Citizens' Council chapters were formed around the state, and within three months a statewide body, the Association of Citizens' Councils of Mississippi, began in Winona, Mississippi. By 1956, the group claimed eighty thousand members in Mississippi. It was particularly active in the Delta region and also had a powerful Jackson chapter, led by William J. Simmons. A national group, the Citizens' Council of America, was formed by 1956. Its board of advisors included Senator James O. Eastland and Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi, Senator J. Strom Thurmond and Representative L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, and Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin.

The Citizens' Council received its revenue from membership dues and grants from the publicly-funded Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an agency that promoted segregation and investigated the activities of civil rights groups. The Citizens' Council officially eschewed violence as a strategy, although many Council members privately condoned the violent tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan. Council members used their connections to influential lawmakers, editors, business people, and state officials to enact pro-segregation legislation, exert economic pressure on those who supported civil rights activities, intimidate African Americans who attempted to register to vote, and create publicity for anti-integration viewpoints. The Council published a national magazine, The Citizen, and produced a weekly telecast, "Forum," on WLBT-TV in Jackson. The Council's work has been credited with significantly reducing the number of Mississippi blacks registered to vote in the 1950s. The Council was active for more than a decade, but began to lose some of its influence by the late 1960s.

This collection documents Citizens' Council activities from 1954 to 1979. It is housed in three boxes and organized according to format.

Box 1 contains a variety of printed material produced by or relating to the Citizens' Council, including correspondence, reports, speeches, flyers, press releases, newsletters, advertisements, pamphlets, broadsides, article reprints, and ephemera. It includes a copy of Thomas J. Brady's 1954 pamphlet, "A Review of Black Monday," which is credited with inspiring the formation of the Citizens' Council.

Boxes 2 and 3 contain oversize article reprints and loose issues of publications, including The Citizen, Dixie-American, Citizens' Council, The Community Citizen, Augusta Courier, Citizens' Informer, and a Citizens' Council section of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

This collection is protected from unauthorized copying by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code).

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