Sub-projects
Cotton
Jim Crow Democrats based their Cold War policy decisions on a white supremacist worldview. Their support for the reconstruction of Germany, the Marshall Plan, and strict displaced persons legislation was connected to the defense of the existing race and class system in the U.S. South. The danger of communist expansion and infiltration and the post-war process of decolonization posed a menace to traditional power structures, both at home and abroad. The southern economy relied on free markets to export their agricultural products such as cotton, on military spending, and on cheap labor. Race and class identity determined social status in the American South. Issues of race and labor were therefore intimately linked in the southern states, which made politicians from the area very apprehensive about the advancement of human rights, not only by the U.S. government, but also through the United Nations. Because human rights advocates promoted political and socioeconomic justice, white southerners considered their message a direct danger to established race and class relations in the region.
Oil
The importance of oil began to grow after World War II. Suburbanization, economic growth, and Cold War geopolitics all led to an increased demand for oil. Between the late 1940s and the mid-1960s, spokesmen of segregation from the Gulf South tried to keep control of the oilfields located in their states’ tidelands. They litigated against the federal government about ownership of off-shore oilfields and in these court cases they invoked the principle of states’ rights, a defense strategy similar to their opposition against school integration. In fact, segregationists wanted to use the revenue generated from oil drilling to finance their segregated school system. The fight over control of the oilfields in the Gulf of Mexico exposes how the maintenance of segregation, the destruction of vulnerable wetlands, and the operation of major oil companies were strongly intertwined.
Sugar
The defense of racial segregation in the U.S. was closely connected with the backing of anticommunist dictators abroad, for instance the brutal Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic. Southern members of Congress were part of a strong lobby for the state-owned Dominican sugar industry, especially after Fidel Castro took control of Cuba. Sugar became an important diplomatic tool for the U.S. in dealing with the erratic Dominican strongman. Politicians from the South played a pivotal role in determining diplomacy and trade with the Trujillo regime and often chose the dictator’s side.
Cells
In 1956 the state government of Mississippi created the Sovereignty Commission, an organization that spearheaded efforts to maintain segregation. Other southern states created similar agencies. One of the Sovereignty Commission’s projects was research on sickle cell anaemia. Through such racialized studies, the Commission wanted to demonstrate the presumed dangers of integration at the genetic level.
Pesticides
By the 1960s, southern planters had become dependent on the use of pesticides and herbicides to combat pests like the boll weevil. They found a spokesperson in the powerful segregationist congressman Jamie Whitten. Whitten and his allies not only tried to sell their agro-environmental racist gospel in the United States, but also in Europe, where multinational chemical companies like Shell supported their efforts.
Canals
During the 1970s, Congress debated relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian government, which was eventually codified in the Torrijos-Carter Treaties. Southern conservatives generally were hostile to these treaties. Simultaneously, they supported the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, a controversial project that started in 1972 and aroused the ire of environmentalists. What do debates about these canals tell us about regional attitudes toward U.S. foreign policy, race, and the environment?
