Remembering Racial Progress, Forgetting White Resistance: The Death of Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis and the Consolidation of the Colorblind Consensus

2017/01/01 by Jesse Curtis · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #American Political and Social Dynamics #Race, History, and American Society #Rhetoric and Communication Studies

paper · doi:10.2979/histmemo.29.1.0134

openalex publication_date 2017/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

This article examines Americans’ memories of white opposition to the civil rights movement. As an early user of colorblind rhetoric to defend white supremacy, the segregationist John Stennis confounded Americans’ expectations of what white racism was supposed to look like. Popular American memory imagined a vast chasm between extremist white resistance of the past and a colorblind present. To accurately remember Stennis when he died in 1995 was thus to call into question the legitimacy of the contemporary colorblind consensus. Instead, he was widely portrayed as a personification of the nation that had supposedly vanquished white resistance and embraced racial equality. This article looks for meaning in these misrepresentations and asks what purpose such narratives served.

Citations

• The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past

Discussions

• this is a good piece on colorblind ideologies Jesse N. Curtis. “Remembering Racial Progress, Forgetting White Resistance: The Death of Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis and the Consolidation of the [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]