"We Had Better Pray the Women Win": White Women and Public School Desegregation in Mississippi

This article investigates the unique role moderate, white southern women played in the public school desegregation battles in the early 1960s by focusing on the group Mississippians for Public Education (MPE) and its conflicts with the influential, segregationist Mississippi Citizens' Council. The MPE illustrates a unique form of social activism employed by sympathetic white southern women, whose tactics were influenced by their specific regional culture, generation, and historical times. These women engaged in a "maternalist form of political activism," using motherhood as a weapon and a shield against their critics.