| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The White South and the Red Menace: Segregationists, Anticommunism, and Massive Resistance, 1945–1965. By George Lewis. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. x, 228 pp. $59.95, ISBN 0-8130-2753-5.)

George Lewis examines the ways in which white racists in the South attempted to use anticommunism to bolster their cause, with a particular focus on North Carolina and Virginia. "A number of segregationists came to view civil rights 'agitators' as part of a Soviet-sponsored plan to foment social, economic and political upheaval in the region," says the author (p. 12); "There may have been a real basis for much of what is often referred to as the anticommunist 'hysteria' of the period" (p. 17). He seeks to draw a distinction between "genuine and cynical anticommunism" and tries to discredit the latter and elevate the former (p. 18). "It would, though, be too simplistic to label all segregationist attacks on racial progressives as episodes of cynical red-baiting," he writes (p. 62). He finds the allegation "correct" that "'the Communist Party has exerted strenuous efforts to increase the intensity of racial strife'" (pp. 19–20). He adds,

The postwar slide of other "Western democracies," notably Great Britain, toward socialism, which was widely perceived as communism's underdeveloped younger sibling increased that fear [of Communists] yet further. (p. 25)

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