History
Some sources claim that the White Citizens' Council originated in Greenwood, Mississippi following the 1954-1955 US Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education that school segregation was unconstitutional. Others say that it originated in Indianola, Mississippi. The leader was Robert B. Patterson of Indianola. He was a plantation manager and the former captain of the Mississippi State University football team. Additional chapters soon appeared in other communities.
Patterson and his followers formed the WCC in part to respond to increased activism by the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a grassroots civil rights organization organized by T. R. M. Howard of the all-black town Mound Bayou, Mississippi in 1951. Mound Bayou was 40 miles from Indianola. Although as an adult Patterson opposed such groups, in boyhood in Clarksdale, Mississippi, he had been friends with Aaron Henry, later an official in the RCNL and the future head of the Mississippi NAACP.
Within a few months, the WCC had attracted members, and new chapters developed beyond Mississippi in the rest of the Deep South. It often had the support of the leading citizens of many communities, including business, civic and sometimes religious leaders.
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