In the Weekly Standard piece that came out today, Gov. Barbour said …
You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders.
In the interview our reporter just did with Barbour’s spokesperson Dan Turner, Turner insisted that …
“Gov. Barbour did not comment on the Citizens Council movement’s history,” Turner responded. “He commented on the business community in Yazoo City, Mississippi.”
That doesn’t seem to square. The larger point of course is that the Citizens Councils were basically the voice of ‘respectable’ white supremacy in the South, aiming to keep segregations and legal discrimination in place while generally stopping short of lynching and paramilitary violence.
