Our Dirty Laundry
Our Dirty Laundry
Mothers of Massive Resistance: Conclusion
Mandy Griffin and Katy Swalwell discuss the concluding chapter of Elizabeth Gillespie McRae's book, 'Mothers of Massive Resistance.' They explore the roles that white women in Northern and Southern United States played in maintaining segregationist policies and resisting racial integration from the 1920s to the 1970s. The chapter ties historical segregation efforts to contemporary issues and how these women evolved their strategies to appear race-neutral while upholding systemic racism. The discussion includes historical instances of organized resistance, connections between Northern and Southern segregationist women, and the critique of historians' portrayal of these efforts. The episode also highlights the importance of understanding systemic racism and addressing the actual root causes rather than superficial symptoms.
Hi, this is Mandy Griffin. And I'm Katie Swalwell, and welcome to our Dirty Laundry, stories of white ladies making a mess of things and how we need to clean up our act.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Hello?
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:How are you?
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Uh, I'm
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:I
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:It's gorgeous fall weather. It's my favorite time of year
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:know.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I love like a crisp. Chill in the air and a little breeze to wear like sandals with pants
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Feels really good to me.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:I know when you finally can get out of the, like sweat dripping down your backstage of summer.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Ugh, it was a swampy summer too, so,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I appreciate not having a sweaty butt when I go outside for sure.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:This, I'm actually going to go for a long walk with our dog. That is my goal to get outside and do a little movement. I've just been feeling like a lot of. Like a lot more anxiety and depression than normal. I think it's more than anything. Not
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:state of the world is helping in any way, shape, or form. But, I was like, okay, is uh, like getting outside around nature and fresh air and some movement is, is definitely not gonna hurt. Like
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Right.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:help right.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah, for sure. Now I had to remind myself of hormones yesterday'cause I was in this conversation where I was getting really irritable and I just wanted to unleash all of the things that I was trying to filter in my head. And I was just like, you're gonna start your period in the next couple of days. Shut your mouth. Like, don't,
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:to
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:don't go there.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Check yourself like, oh, this isn't real,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah. Uhhuh.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:it's real in a sense. But yeah, to be able to lift up and be like, oh my, the level of rage I'm feeling right now is not appropriate to act on. I
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Right.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Check it a little
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:but if someone in my neighborhood sees me like screaming as I'm walking through neighborhood, that's probably
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:It's all okay.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Yeah. Nothing to see here.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:It's all okay. It's all okay.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Friday. Uh, well, we are finally on the conclusion. I say finally, I think this has gone really
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:I know.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:loved this book.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:but we are at the concluding chapter, which moves into the seventies. Of Mothers of Massive Resistance, which is a fabulous book by Elizabeth Gillespie McRay, who we are talking with next week,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:wait for that
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:This was great. Again, it just ended not on a high note because all of this
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:No.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:actually so depressing, but it just is such a good book.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Enlightening note, it's an enlightening note. I think like a lot of things are solidified in this chapter. I think a lot of our motivation for doing what we do is brought up in this chapter. So yeah, it was very interesting to see'cause. This whole book is focused on these key women in the south who are running these pro segregationists political movements. And this chapter ties in the prediction that Ms. Florence Tiller's Ogden made when she said, when this moves to the north, like you're gonna see basically.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:And, and that she was right, like
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:She was right.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:that white women would join their cause and stop arguing so hard for, for desegregation efforts. And it, the very first page here, migra says that her prediction emerged because she was a well-informed, politically connected conservative female segregationist embedded in national networks, committed to various forms of segregationist policies. But I loved this line. This was another just classic. Mick Ray, a little lovely snark. Her anticipation of national resistance to racial equality was not mere the bitter expression of an aging woman who watched her political efforts meet defeat nor the words of a white Southern apologist. Even though she was both zing.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:That's a historian mic drop there. Uh, but it, it really shifts our attention and the conclusion to the north and the, to some degree, the ways that the southern women were actually very much connected and supporting and offering advice to these northern women, but really exploring this prediction in saying, ah, she was totally right. You know, this is absolutely what happens in cities all over the north. She starts off by. Distinguishing between deur and de facto
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:which I thought was really important. What did you take
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:I thought that was very interesting too. So there's the two arguments about why segregation exists, part of it, which is the whole Jim Crow order in the south. That's the de jour part of it. That's the legal.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:laws that say, you cannot live here. You cannot drink this water, you cannot
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:you,
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:this pool.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:you cannot sit on the bus. You cannot do this. Like, that's the part. But then there is always this argument of the defacto, which is just quote unquote, natural.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:People just choose to live in their own communities. They choose to have these neighborhoods or these affiliations, and that is the way people want it to happen. It doesn't, it's
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:It
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:the way things are.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:it's just kind of the way that it happened. Yeah. I think that distinction, and she really unpacks, it's not natural, obviously, she puts those in hard quotes for sure. That it's both de jore and de facto are clearly the product of, she says local policies and legislation like redlining, federal loan policy, urban renewal plans, highway development, natural segregation, it turned out was not natural at all, but it seems like it is. the white people specifically it, and it lets them feel morally superior to. people in the south where it was de jour
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:It masks and hides the way that white supremacy works. It also made me think of the critique of the phrase natural disaster
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:so many. Of the catastrophes that get labeled that way in the news are not natural at all. They're the result of manmade climate change, or they're the result of like horrible agricultural practices or engineering practices. So it's very much caused, but those root causes have been masked, and so it seems it's just an accident. It's just natural,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:really, it like. these white women of off the hook
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:thinking, I'm not racist,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:but I'm going to, you know, fight all of these attempts to make things more equitable or more accessible. I'm gonna fight them
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:a lot and I'm actually gonna to use racism often to fight them. But, say that it's not because of racism that I'm fighting it
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Well, and I think Florence Ogden had seen. How it would be used because she saw the transition in the south of overt racism to more of the colorblind politics and then
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:this agenda that could, on the surface look not racist. So by talking about things like she says, parental authority, constitutional integrity, limited government, national sovereignty, school choice, which.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:All continues in the conservative agenda today.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Yeah.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:these women could say those were the things they were focusing on. They were worried about communism, they were worried about the constitution, but they were clearly not racist. They say to themselves.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Uh, but, and yet, like all the evidence mounts up contrary to
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:oh yeah, and in very overt ways too. Like sometimes not, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Like if you are yelling the N word at kids, then yeah,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:racist
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:like that. Or even if maybe you aren't, but if a lot of the people in your organization do, and
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:supporting your organization. your organization is racist.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:know what else to tell you. You know,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:and I, I wrote in the emergence here just why, are we, and by we here, I mean like white liberal people just so bad at identifying root causes. And of course I think we have been grappling with the answer to that question all the years of this podcast. But just the importance of being able to understand structural systemic. Racism, sexism, ableism, like all the isms, how it works. And then we also shouldn't be surprised that the efforts of these women is to make sure young people do not learn those things, so that it makes it really hard for adults to understand the world through systems and structures. So they can say, oh, it's not, I'm not racist that we don't have any explicitly racist laws, so therefore racism is gone.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Right.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:and that's it. Then it's a victory for these women who've been fighting for segregation and let go of the explicit need to call it segregation or to call it racism, they let go of that to keep it going and how, just how successful they've been.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:And we also bypass. Any real efforts to solve root causes, like you're saying, when we don't actually address them and we get to gloss over them with these sorts of efforts. But so she talks about all of these associations that can get formed again, like these women have so many fucking committees mid
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I know they do.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:like,
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I love some of these acronyms, by the way.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:oh my gosh, my favorite was the nag. We'll get to that one.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Yes,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:That one, the National Action Group. That was a great one. But one of the first ones she talks about was the Concerned Parents Organization, which was, I love this, led by three middle class men. But the work was sustained by the work of white mothers,
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Yeah.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:including Mrs. Charles Warren, no actual name for herself. And. This is the argument that comes up. Like she was noted for her willingness for black parents to buy in her neighborhood and send their children to scroll with her children, but she continued. If anyone thinks they're going to bust my children across town without a fight, they're dreaming.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:This, this is the crux of it. And this is in Charlotte, which is still, I would say the south. But you were, it's like moving for the North we're the first kind of busing, it was post Brown versus board of education that said school public schools had to desegregate and all of these districts we've talked about in past chapters stalled and dragged their feet and parents were putting up resistance and so. Busing ends up becoming a court ordered way to make sure that the Supreme Court ruling was enacted, so to say, in schools where more than 50% of the kids are kids of color, we're going to bus kids there. There's like the tiniest part of me that understands not wanting kids to be on a bus for an hour one way. There's this Spec of logistical concern that I actually could be more sympathetic to. But first of all, it's not remotely about that. So let's not pretend that's even an argument any of them were making. It's not, not even close. And then I was also pushing myself to think what inconveniences are we willing to endure to make it right?
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Right.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:structural systemic oppression is not going to be resolved in a convenient way that it's just not
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:suck it up, you
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Right.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:it's a very much like a not in my backyard kind of attitude
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:talked about. Yeah, and I was thinking the same thing, like some of these arguments which were obviously not their underlying arguments, but the ones they were making on the surface, like I, I do have sympathy for some of them, like when she gets to talking about how the working class
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:moms were irritated at the suburban moms.'cause they're like, sure you can fight against this'cause this isn't affecting you. Like we are women who have to go to work to support our families. We don't have the means to move out to the suburbs where we don't have to be affected by this, and now they're gonna start busing our kids, which means I have to get to work before they can get on a bus. So who's gonna take care of that. And I understand that concern and that like loss of control and that fear that that's gonna impact your kids negatively.'cause it's one thing to say like, I want to make sacrifices to try to make this better and more equal. When you realize that you're having to have your children make those sacrifices too, that you're saying you're gonna do this, then I get. The initial hesitance to do that. But the question is like you just said, what are you willing to do?
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I also call bullshit on it, is that there, in all of this chapter, there's not organizations of black parents saying, we don't want, you know, it's not, it's specifically white women who are pissed off. And then very quickly, whatever other arguments they're making dissipate when they are. Yelling things like at one point, she says at, at times, and now this is when she's talking about white women in Boston, which we'll get to in a minute, but she said they stress their opposition to busing and not school integration. Again, like I'm not racist,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:but, um, that they could not even pretend to reconcile opposition to busing with the rejection of racism. And that's because. You have this, like this woman, Elvira Pixie Paladino,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:elected member of the Boston School Committee yelling, you fucking white trash you. Fuck N-word. You're an N word lover.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:yelling that at people on a playground. So
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I don't believe you. You know, like it's, it's just over and over again. ways that they acted and the. The rhetoric and the act, the, just the violence that ensued, belies their, their real rationale for not wanting this to happen.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:And it, yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:can call bullshit on
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Right.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:not racist lo logic.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:And it's also not getting to the base of where these working white mothers should be irritated, which is the fact that we don't have any structural support for working mothers, like there's not be mad at capitalism that you can't, like
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:right, right.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:of, you should be in solidarity with other people over this instead of blaming it on, you know, them trying to bust your kids. How about you blame it on the fact that you can't afford to live without. Working this way, you know, you can't, yeah. There's just so many other ways to attack it. There's so many other ways to imagine how you could have addressed it.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Without it being this.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:That's right.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:know, again, when, when you look at the organizations that are popping up and they're partnering with the K, k, K,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:should be like a
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:It's a red flag
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:mm-hmm. Yeah.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:that's. And
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Yep.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:maybe we shouldn't have that alliance and try to justify it whatsoever. But there's so many hypocrisies in here too, like going back to the CPA there was a wife of the vice chairman, Jane Scott. She said that a parent's duty to protect the innocence of her children superseded her responsibility to follow man's law. And what that triggered for me was. Okay. How come that works for you in your white woman world when that argument is quickly shut down by anyone who wants to use it to justify like people immigrating here and ignoring the laws of. Immigration because they're trying to protect their children. They're just trying to protect their children. So why doesn't that supersede the laws of man? But that's not anything that's willing to be conceded on that side. Like it's just convenient the way that you can weaponize motherhood for yourself, but not let anybody else have that.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:And you always point this out like to what ends? Are you even ignoring the laws? If you are ignoring them in order to continue to uphold white supremacy, that is not justified. You know, you
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:a lot, like extreme evil is not the same as extreme
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:breaking a law that's unjust because it's upholding. Systems of violent oppression against people is not the same as breaking the law because you wanna continue to do violence and oppress
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:course, like getting everyone to come to consensus about how to sort those actions is never gonna happen.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:it's clear for me, you know, this was, now I'm on page 2 21. We're back in, in Charlotte that the white parents are anti busing. But of course they're also talking about curriculum. The curriculum didn't seem to spark as much as the busing, you know, but it, people were still mad about it. And that they, white parents boycotted stores, kept kids at home, had rallies, joined Wildcat Strikes, shut down the city bus system, and it was such a weird. Upside down version of reading about the civil rights movement and the tactics that people used there to advocate for justice. That it's like this weird mutant version of those tactics to uphold white supremacy.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah. Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Oh, these other organizations, we've got nag,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Action Group. We've got Save Our Schools, SOS, we've got the CPA. Elizabeth McRay talks about how so many of these had racially neutral innocuous
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:parents for Freedom, citizens against busing, you know, but then when you poke at it a little bit, it's like, yeah, they're partnered with. k, K or they are having George Wallace come and speak, like be the keynote address at their
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Um, that's when you start to make some of these connections. Uh.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah, she, she said, many opponents of busing invoked the link between school integration, interracial relationships, and miscegenation as they destroyed property blocked roadways, enchanted, do away with the N word and pigs rhyming with each other.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:with pigs,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Again, like this is not just about constitutional
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:It's like she's, they cannot, it says they could hardly suppress the white supremacist rhetoric that characterized many of the protests. You just can't pretend it's not.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:The other example of that that she gives were the nags that had organized pickets. I, this cracked me up that they block buses with baby strollers chain themselves to bus garage Gates held a 620 mile mother's march to Washington, DC where they gathered at the Washington Monument proudly wearing monogrammed aprons that attested to their roles as homemakers. But, at the same time, school buses were set on fire
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:invited George Wallace to be their keynote speaker. And at the pickets they yelled, N word, N word, N word at the school, children walking into the schools.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Good
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah, and I'm like,
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:children, like, oh my God,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:and also like property destruction is fine in this instance. Like you hear that all the time about like anti protests, people who are against protests at Progressive. Issues because they're like, oh, but you can't destroy property. Like property is this end all be all,
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:it's your site that wants to do it, unless you're storming the capitol on January 6th, or unless you're setting school buses on fire or unless you're like another part with that, uh. The Padilla, or whatever her name was, that was yelling like slashing tires of white women who were trying to help integrate things. Like, it's fine. It's fine
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Right.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:when we wanna do it.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:The other mention of that was how they were so angry that these rulings for busing, they called it social engineering as if white supremacy isn't social engineering.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:it's like not as much about the means as it is about the ends, like too wet ends. And are they justified because they are. rights and humanity and, you know, protecting the vulnerable or are they supporting systems of oppression? Um, there was a lot in here. Another group was called Roar
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:our Alienated Rights, ROAR, and that was founded by Louise De Hicks, who is a piece of work. I remember way back when I was teaching US history, we would show clips from. Eyes on the Prize, this documentary about the Civil Rights Movement, and there's a really powerful episode about what happened in Boston because it's really trying to show that the civil rights movement went well past the sixties and it was not just in the South. And you know what happened there was really powerful. And to watch the footage of what happened when white children were bused to black schools and were. Welcome. There were welcoming committees and it was like most opposite vibe. And then you have black children being bused into the white neighborhoods and the like terrifying violence and like just how different it was. Of course, this is all also a class issue,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:neighborhoods. South Boston was white, Roxbury was black, they were both working class. Garrity was the judge, uh, Wendell Arthur Garrity, who. Who decided busing would happen in Boston, but he didn't include
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:His neighborhood.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:suburbs or his neighborhood exactly
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:fancy
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:it is definitely this class and to your point, like pitting people against each other when really the working class white people have way more in common with the working class black people that they're yelling at and throwing things at,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:uh, and just can't lift up. To see it.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:One of the things that talks about a lot in here is the argument that. These white families are making against like how these busing policies are destroying their hard work and decisions that they had made and sacrifices that they had made. They talk about how busing many believed had rendered meaningless. The financial sacrifices they made to send their children to good schools, unquote. They emphasized how hard work and hard economic choices made it possible for them to buy good homes and good school districts, which would make the American dream possible for their children. And I wrote in the margins like this, reaffirms that the American dream and achieving that is based on oppressing
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:someone at some level all the time.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:the American dream doesn't exist without having someone beneath you.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Mm-hmm.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:have to crawl on top of people. You have to, there has to be bad schools so that you can have the good schools like
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:And it doesn't actually even work.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah. No.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:guaranteed, like you have been taught to believe that you are entitled to these things. This is, I hate the word entitlements, how it typically gets used. So I'm using that word very specifically like you believe as a white person who isn't born into money, if you work hard, you could get ahead, and then when that doesn't work for you, instead of blaming. That lie, blame these other people or efforts to try to make things better for other people. You know, it's, it's just so predictable.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:It made me like I wanted to look into this history. I was like, when did it start? That school funding was tied to property taxes. Because that's a huge problem that keeps getting, um, it still gets brought up and I actually looked it up and it started in the 16 hundreds. It was like some law in 1647 initially that tied it to property taxes, and that from the beginning, again, just the baked in inequity in a system. That's structured like that. Like if we could restructure from the bottom so that there weren't these inequalities based on where you lived, what neighborhood you were in. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:and that's such a good point. I think just one of the big takeaways from this section was about the class, the interest in class dynamics, but also just how so many of these Northern white women. tried to distinguish themselves from southern white women and really tried to say that they weren't racist and in this the next breath or their next action. is exactly what's happening. She talks about one ro me, member also had been a really active member of the Sierra Club and had worked with a lot of black women opposing the expansion of the airport in Boston, and then she was part of the anti bussing movement and like, couldn't believe it was about race and yet none of the black women she had worked with. on the side of anti busing and could like, so it is about race, actually. Like when,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:when none of the women you are working with on this issue are showing up to these other meetings, that's then it is about race, whether you want it to be about race or not.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Just here says that, these women imagine themselves as different, as less racist than their southern sisters, even when they're maternal and constitutional language resembled that of so many southern segregationists in the seventies and even when other women working around them were throwing eggs at buses, yelling things at kids like it is. This is just another thing if you look around You normally like to be in interracial coalitions and that's the work you wanna do, and then you show up in a space to advocate for something and none of those people are there.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:You're in the wrong space. You're in the wrong space.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:like get out.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:She says, this is on page 2 35. What these women have told us is that a political ideology that was ostensibly race neutral by the 1970s must be understood in the context of history that reached well back into the 1920s, and in conjunction with political involvement that was rarely race neutral. In fact, their political activism was often overt in its pursuit of white racial interests. So you cannot ignore. Where all of this came from, and then pretend it's like we talked about last week you can't let it off. The hook of this is all rooted in very overt racism. It doesn't matter that you've changed the language, now
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:and it doesn't matter if you personally, d they aren't like, you know, don't believe that you're harboring racist sentiments. Like it, it doesn't, if you are unable to see the connections to racism, that's your problem. That doesn't mean that those connections.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:and then figure that out and make a decision about it. There was an organization, it's not like, there weren't alternatives, you know,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:this cwac, I don't even
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:what they call themselves, the Citywide
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:we're doing.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Coalition.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yes.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:That was a biracial group of men and women that were helping to implement the busing decision by serving as community liaison, school volunteers and staff at communication centers, what their work was. I thought this was so fascinating that. The white people went undercover to attend anti bus meetings, like, yes. Yes, use
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:whiteness to spy on these shitty people and would come back with transcripts. They had volunteers who would document daily harassment that their kids were experiencing at SCH at schools. They had plenty to document. They would collect copies of all the anti busing flyers that were being posted in schools. They had a rumor control center because of course there's all this misinformation. To try to undermine the busing efforts. And so they're trying to keep track of that. So this group stayed really busy. So it's not like this lady Virginia Sheehy, who was like, oh, I had all these friends in this Sierra Club and they're not coming to anti busing meetings. It's like, yeah,'cause they're all this other group.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:other group, like figure it out.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:There was another woman I really wanted to talk about this. She wasn't named, this is on page 2 31, but she. Is
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Hyde Park woman,
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Yes.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:my gosh, this part was crazy.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Yes.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:wrote a letter to Judge Garrity, the judge that enforced this busing to tell him how the anti busing cause had filled her days. She told the judge her political activism had ruined her diet. Which now consisted of potato chips on the run. Her sex life was now non-existent. Her housekeeping duties and even her daily hygiene, since she had lowered her weekly number of baths to save time for anti busing organizing. I mean, get out of here
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:But here is what she's doing. She had already written 245 letters per
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Weak.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:attended rallies, delivered speeches, a prayer protest, which of course these people are praying
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:know, they have their prayer meeting and then they go yell at kids with the n word
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:it, that's what would Jesus
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:that would call people up to try to get volunteers. She was homeschooling her like all these things. So it's like, yeah, I'm not surprised you're getting potato chips and never taking a bath. I don't have that same excuse and that basically described my life, but, uh, that I thought that was wild. Can
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Judge Garrity getting that letter and being like, I don't need to know that you're not having sex.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Oh my gosh. These women are something else. That's one thing that I'm really interested to ask. Um, McCray when we speak to her is just like. Where she came, where she got all of this research, like how she dug into all of this. Where are her sources? The book itself like has a hundred pages at the end of sources and stuff that she used, so I can't imagine the amount of time she spent like putting all of this together and she did it in such an amazing way that I'm just super impressed by, and I really excited to talk to her about it.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:For sure. There's a couple other things I wanted to talk about. So one I wanna put a pin in, maybe we can end with this, is just the way that McRay calls out other historians in
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:this
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:But the last bit, and this is kind of the last rationale she's giving for why she's even calling bullshit on these women who are like, I'm not racist, but is just the impact all of this had on black. People in these communities. And again, I know we're talking about this in a very like white, black, binary
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:That's the, history we are reading right now, but it's of course I think people of color more broadly. But she says this is page 2 32 that a lot of black Americans realize it's not the bus it's us, and that they were connecting all the dots and. protestors attacked buses with black children on them, talked about oversexed black boys and interracial sex, and practiced verbal and sexual violence on school playgrounds. It was black parents and their children who suffered the repercussions, not the bus. For black families, the economic concerns or complex class politics of the anti bussers were harder to discern.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I think that's another piece of it too. Like if you are thinking to yourself I'm standing up for this issue. I'm not racist. That's not why I support this or why I'm advocating for X, Y, or Z, but like, okay, let's, take you at your word and that you're ignoring the fact that the Klan is showing up for those meetings and they're feeling totally comfortable in that space. Let's pretend we can ignore that. When you hear neighbors sharing how it's harming them and their children. That is also a giant red flag.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:out another solution if
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:for, because apparently you're not racist or ableist or sexist, but when people of color or people with disabilities, like all of these that you say you don't hate, when they are telling you that what you are advocating for is hurting them, stop doing that thing. Yeah.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Even if you still can't see the connection and you still don't understand, or you think oh, it's not actually about that, shut
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:stop. Like it, it the, again, like the odds are you are missing
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:That's honestly, like if there's any after all these years we've been doing this, it's like the odds are, it's our ignorance
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:in the way. So just take a beat. Sit down. Just just
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Shut your mouth for, yeah. Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:because that again, of like the degree to which you are harboring some like latent or, you know, subconscious race. It's like not even, I don't even care if we had like a little meter that could like B, B, B like test. How genuine you're being.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:doesn't matter at the point that the community you say you're not against is desperately trying to get you to stop advocating for it. Stop
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:the end.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:And if you don't, then again, that's more evidence that you actually are invested in whatever systems of oppression are at play.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah. And your continuation of it is what keeps it all going to, I like the way she ends by saying legislation was never enough to sustain a Jim k Crow South. Or a nation, but it was also not enough to destroy it.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:it.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:And
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Yep.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:that I think was the takeaway. Yes, we fight for better laws, we fight against Cycl race, but it's not that that holds it all together. It's the underlying. Ways that we all show up in our communities, the ways that we organize the fights that we do for our own families. Like that's what keeps all of this going. And then to the point of how historians present it. She says, these white women very clearly wanted to sell this story, that their fight against this was more nuanced than what was going on in the south. It was more complex and historians.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:pro segregation, it's anti busing.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:call it, even though that they're synonymous. But let's not pretend that anti busing is somehow different than what all these other women were doing in the South who were explicitly pro Jim Crow.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah, and I do like that she called out, that historians have also couched it in those terms and tried to make it seem like it was more, it's this whole. The whole thing that everyone does on a lot of things that aren't as complex as we try to make it. But you know, there's just more to it than that. Sometimes there's not more to it than that. A lot of times there's not more to it than that. Like you're trying to sell an idea that there is because you're trying to cover up the bullshit and that's, you still have to call out the bullshit.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Well, here's a, maybe a good quote to end on then. This is page 2 33, she says, by the 1970s, segregationists across the nation had orchestrated decades long opposition to school integration. They had buried the persistence of structural racism behind a story of the legislative end of. De jour segregation. They had elevated individual rights and made sacrosanct the rights of the families to determine their children's education. They had seized the issue of school choice and taken it from its dissemination by southern states to circumvent Brown and applied it nationwide to the issue of busing. They had worked over decades to sidestep meaningful integration in the larger political agenda of racial equality. After arguing that the end of legal segregation was unconstitutional, they continued to argue that customary segregation upheld by race neutral policies was beyond the scope of judicial authority. Reconceived massive resistance was not confined to the Jim Crow South. It did not die with the defeat of de jore segregation. Its fiercest proponents. Were not the silenced racist demagogues, but the daily grassroots activists who continually reshaped their support for various versions of racial segregation, and that is who is in charge today.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:That brings us to this moment. The story we've told were like, the demons were vanquished. The dragons were slayed. Nope, because the whole time the actual fuel for this were these white women making it work, and they kept making it work
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:kept making it work and are making it
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I really, really appreciated, that being. Really the heart of this book is how that shift from de jour to defacto and the ways that these women turned that from a defeat into a victory for their agenda.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yeah.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:I,
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Well, I think that's gonna be like one of the main focuses when we talk to the author next week and how she sees that transition too, and. What she learned in writing this book for how we can move forward. So I'm excited to talk about it.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Me too. If anyone's listening and wants to send in questions, please do that. Thank you again for listening. As always, subscribe, like, leave a review, especially if you like it. Don't leave a negative review'cause you have better things to do. Just move on with your life. We're just so grateful to everyone listening and very excited for next week.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Yep.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:talk to you soon.
mandy---she-her-_1_09-05-2025_123917:Okay. Bye guys.
katy-guest290_1_09-05-2025_143916:Hi.