White segregationists appropriated the civil rights anthem to protest integration.

Evidence

Segregationists, of course, did stand against those things, and often with bloody and brutal consequences. But, like all people, they did not think of themselves in terms of what they opposed but rather in terms of what they supported. The conventional wisdom has held that they were only fighting against the rights of others. But, in their own minds, segregationists were instead fighting for rights of their own—such as the “right” to select their neighbors, their employees, and their children’s classmates, the “right” to do as they pleased with their private property and personal businesses, and, perhaps most important, the “right” to remain free from what they saw as dangerous encroachments by the federal government. To be sure, all of these positive “rights” were grounded in a negative system of discrimination and racism. In the minds of segregationists, however, such rights existed all the same. Indeed, from their perspective, it was clearly they who defended individual freedom, while the “so-called civil rights activists” aligned themselves with a powerful central state, demanded increased governmental regulation of local affairs, and waged a sustained assault on the individual economic, social, and political prerogatives of others. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 31 (#expands, via linked claim)

The accidental activists and PTA populists from suburban Charlotte co-opted the rhetoric and imitated the tactics of the civil rights movement in their promises to take the political offensive to secure the defense of their homes and families and in their insistence that industrious local citizens rather than unelected federal judges should control tax-supported schools. … John Campbell articulated the feelings of many when he warned that the parents in the CPA represented “a majority that has been pushed around for the last five years by a militant minority and an aggressive bureaucracy, a majority whose chafing has been restrained only by its good manners, but also a majority which is reaching the end of its tether, and is going to bring forth its own revolution when pushed too far.” … Another father, claiming affiliation with a nonviolent “moderate majority” in the United States, wrote that “the white majority has civil rights too … and has tried to be very understanding, but we don’t like having our feet stepped on repeatedly and we can’t be expected to keep turning the other cheek forever.” — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 41 (#builds-on, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Busing opponents inverted civil rights language to cast white taxpayers as an aggrieved majority — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 41; Segregationists understood resistance as defending their own rights and freedoms — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 31

Related

• Segregationists understood resistance as defending their own rights and freedoms (similarity 0.83)
• Busing opponents inverted civil rights language to cast white taxpayers as an aggrieved majority (similarity 0.83)
• The Civil Rights Act empowered white resistance by legitimizing anti-government conservatism. (similarity 0.79)
• The antibusing revolt openly fought to protect suburban residential and consumer privileges. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Segregationists understood resistance as defending their own rights and freedoms #expands (0.75) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 31