Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order by Joy Ann Williamson-Lott (review)

In Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order, Joy Ann Williamson-Lott examines the battles that professors and students waged against southern universities’ faculty, trustees, and presidents who sought to prevent their campuses from becoming activist centers during the era of civil rights, Black Power, and antiwar movements as institutions tried to secure federal funding and uphold the southern racial hierarchy. Williamson-Lott moves beyond the limiting scope of institutional desegregation, contending that her “focus on the intracampus movement for dignity, power, and constitutional freedoms allows for an intimate look at how constituents at southern institutions, to differing degrees and with differing results, forced their campuses to alter internal policies and procedures that stifled dissent” (p. 3). The book investigates the various agendas that individuals and groups possessed for their actions, demonstrating the internal battles that higher educational institutions fought during the civil rights movement. Williamson-Lott’s work contributes to a regional narrative that is often overlooked due to the geographical specificity of civil rights battles.

Williamson-Lott effectively depicts the multidimensional tensions between state elected officials, public and private school trustees and presidents, and student bodies. Campus newspapers lend insight to these perspectives. In her analysis of the University of South Carolina’s white student newspaper, The Gamecock, and South Carolina State College’s black newspaper, The Collegian, for instance, Williamson-Lott demonstrates that black student activists had limited institutional freedoms compared with their white counterparts. She explains that black students’ group activism for desegregation resulted in harsher backlash compared with individual white students’ similar opinions regarding the issue. Williamson-Lott successfully transitions from students’ perspectives to trustees’ in her analysis of how universities tried to use anti-communism campaigns to block activist speakers, who threatened the schools’ federal aid and racial order. Such constant personal and ideological battles mimicked those at the national level.

The book’s weaknesses are in its generalizations regarding primary sources, scope, and terminology. For example, one area Williamson-Lott focuses on is the role federal aid played in shaping a college or university’s political positions. However, the author does not provide or incorporate specific communications between the universities and the federal government detailing the federal government’s impact. The book would benefit from providing specific information regarding the actions or motivations of the people discussed, including using more quotations, statistics, and other forms of evidence. Without such specification, it is difficult to capture the bottom-up perspective that the book attempts to depict. The author’s geographical scope is also too broad. Williamson-Lott does not always state how the schools she discusses are connected. If the scope were smaller and focused on several universities within one state, or focused on a particular type of institution (public or private, white or black), the author would be able to support the book’s main argument throughout. Furthermore, the author uses the phrase white supremacy throughout the book, but an operational definition is not provided to explain how the phrase is being used. The phrase is mostly used as a blanket term to describe anyone or anything expressing antiblack or anti–civil rights views.

Jim Crow Campus provides insight into the civil rights movement beyond the national narrative, adding significant nuance. Williamson-Lott’s contribution to the historiography of the civil rights movement includes new people, places, tactics, and, most important, perspectives.