In May 1956, the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most important African American newspapers in the country, reported on a recent development that it took to be encouraging news. While the nomenclature and the targets have changed, the strategy and rhetoric of anti-wokeness bear remarkable similarities to what John Patterson, the Alabama governor and staunch segregationist, called the “ all-out war on integrationists” in 1959. But understanding the precedents for DeSantis’ Stop WOKE Act helps us see that the contemporary conservative playbook has deep roots in history. Most of these efforts failed, and their targets-which included large corporations like Ford and Philip Morris, companies that advertised on popular television programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, and school districts that adopted textbooks that expurgated racist materials-flourished. Board of Education decision of 1954, segregationist politicians attempted to use state power to punish progressive corporations, civil rights groups, and media outlets pundits condemned what they saw as the narrowing of acceptable discourse and the demonization of their racist worldview and citizen groups organized boycotts to maintain segregation. While the war on what DeSantis has also called “the woke mind virus” is new, the rhetoric and tactics employed by the Florida governor and many other conservatives date back at least to the start of the modern Civil Rights Movement. A PAC supporting Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, for example, recently produced an ad praising last month’s boycotts of Target and Bud Light for their supposedly trans-friendly policies and concluded with him proclaiming, “ We will never ever surrender to the woke mob.” Aping Churchill’s famous 1940 inspirational speech encouraging the British in the early days of their fight against fascism, DeSantis, who earlier this year said “woke” seven times in 26 seconds, implored, “ We fight the woke in the legislature. “Half the people can’t define it they don’t know what it is.” Notwithstanding Trump’s assertion, many conservatives have targeted “woke” as the enemy du jour. “ I don’t like the term woke,” he told an Iowa audience recently. In recent months, the campaign against “woke” has reached the point where even Donald Trump, who in the past has thrown around this phrase quite a bit, has claimed it’s gone too far.
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