Radical segregationists recruited industrial workers through staged open-air rallies

Evidence

Indeed, the textile mills served as a ripe recruiting ground. In mill neighborhoods across Atlanta—the Exposition Cotton Mills, the Whittier Mills in the northwest section, the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills on the East Side, and especially the Piedmont Mills off Ashby Street—the Columbians made their pitch directly to working-class whites. Setting up shop in an alleyway or vacant lot, the group worked from a flatbed truck draped with the American flag and the Columbians’ lightning bolt banner. Portable speakers blared out renditions of “Dixie,” “Atlanta, G-A,” and “Hail, Columbia!” so loudly they could be heard several blocks away. Drawn by the music, crowds of curious mill workers and wives drifted in, finding young men in khaki uniforms welcoming them. When two hundred or three hundred had gathered, the music stopped and the speeches began. The speakers varied, but their themes were usually the same. “We’re going to them and putting on a show,” Loomis explained. “We’re telling them stuff they want to hear—that they, the white Anglo-Saxons, are the best people on earth, and that they’re entitled to more than they’re getting.” — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 112

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Segregationist leaders reframed their activism as lawful peacemaking, not bigotry — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 137; Mass protests transform individual participants into class-conscious actors — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 1087; Working-class whites greeted open fascist segregationism with mass enthusiasm. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 117 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Working-class whites greeted open fascist segregationism with mass enthusiasm. #expands (0.82) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 117
• Segregationists recruited businessmen as their moderate alliance cracked #expands (0.81) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 440
• Solidarity arises in action as protests define distinct symbolic boundaries #expands (0.78) — Donatella della Porta et al., Mobilizing Against the Odds, 121
• Pan-movements mobilized liberal tactics and popular-democracy rhetoric for race ends #expands (0.76) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 602
• Mass protests transform individual participants into class-conscious actors #expands (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1087
• Respectable segregationism paired capitalism rhetoric with veiled mob violence #qualifies (0.75) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 132
• Segregationist leaders reframed their activism as lawful peacemaking, not bigotry #complicates (0.74) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 137
• Modern protest movements are transient swarms held together by stimuli, not durable organizations #complicates (0.72) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 229