University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2020 Not Accepting the Status Quo: Southern White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement Ashton Ryan Cooper University of Tennessee, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Cooper, Ashton Ryan, "Not Accepting the Status Quo: Southern White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2020. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5825 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Ashton Ryan Cooper entitled "Not Accepting the Status Quo: Southern White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Higher Education Administration. Dorian L. McCoy, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Karen D. Boyd, Jud C. Laughter, Lois Presser Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Not Accepting the Status Quo: Southern White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Ashton Ryan Cooper May 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Ashton Ryan Cooper All rights reserved. ii Dedication For my daughter, thanks for making me a Dad. iii Acknowledgements TO GOD BE THE GLORY! Thank you Gordon, Gene, Jim, Fran, Ed, Brenda, and Tom to sharing your stories with me. I hope that your stories can inspire and inform the current and next generation of antiracists in the United States. Misha, thank you for being a supportive wife and partner during the last five years. You continuously support my dreams, and I look forward to our future together. To everyone in the CCRW (crew), from Tuesday/Thursday night kickball, to sushi, to concernts, you have given me and Misha family here in Knoxville and helped to keep me sane. Hope Fellowship, you have been the church family that we have needed in Knoxville, and my story would not be what it is today without the love, support, and spiritual guidance you have provided me. Special thanks goes to Dominique, you have been more than a pastor, you have been a brother. To my Texas friends and family, sorry that I had to come all the way to Tennessee to get this done, but alas, I made it! To my cohort, thanks for all of the encouragement you have given me…and the food. Classes, especially on Saturdays, would have been a whole lot longer without it. To the ELPS faculty and staff, thank you for giving me the proper guidance and support to fulfill this dream of mine. To my committee, I am slightely biased, but I am pretty positive I had the Dream Team equivilant of a committee! Dr. Karen Boyd (DKB) , you have fostered my interest in exploring the past to inform the future. I hope to inspire students as you have me someday. Dr. Jud Laughter (Jud), conversations with you helped me to sort through my ideas as well as shift my perspectives. Dr. Lois Presser (Dr. Lo), you showed me that my research was worth pursuing, iv and gave me space to find my voice as a scholar. Lastly, Dr. Dorian L. McCoy (Dorian), there is not much to say other than, I hope to make you proud as a professor one day. You have shown me the value to being meticoulous (I am still working on eliminating prepositional phrases), demonstrated how to be a caring father and husband, and how to “take the glasses off” from time to time. We have come a VERY long way from that first paper in Qualitative Methods! Lastly, to Mom and Mike. Its your shoulders that I stand on. I love you. v Abstract Historically, the study of racial identity has focused on Groups of Color (Jardina, 2019). This myopic focus has left White people and scholars deficient in White racial literacy and critical consciousness (Tatum, 1994; Wise, 2005, 2008). Moreover, there are inadequate historical accounts of White anti-racist exemplars to examine how White people develop racial literacy, and how racial identities play a role in students’ decisions to engage in activism (Ayvazian, 2004; Laughter, 2007; Malott et al., 2019; O’Brien, 2001; Smith & Redington, 2010; Spanierman & Smith, 2017). This narrative inquiry collected the critical life histories of seven southern White people who identified as activists and participated in the Civil Rights Movement. Their critical life histories were collected to inform and demonstrate how southern White students came to participate in the Civil Rights Movement, despite being socialized in a society that was overtly racist (Diniz-Pereira, 2008). The narratives that the participants shared contributed to the literature by providing an understanding of how southern White people developed their anti- racist and activist identities. These narratives can aid current and future higher education administrators, educators, and researchers in understanding how White students develop anti- racist identity, and how they may become better at supporting Black and other People of Color. vi Table of Contents CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF WHITENESS ........................................................ 5 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM .................................................................................. 6 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY .............................................................................................. 8 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................................................ 8 THEORETICAL FRAME .................................................................................................. 8 METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................... 10 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY.................................................................................. 10 SUMMARY AND ORGANIZATION ............................................................................. 12 CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE .......................................................... 14 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF STUDENT ACTIVISM IN HIGHER EDUCATION . 14 THE COLONIAL PERIOD AND THE 19TH CENTURY ........................................................... 15 THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ............................................................................................ 16 THE 1940S AND 1950S ................................................................................................... 19 1960S: THE ERA OF UNREST .......................................................................................... 22 THE STUDENT MOVEMENT ............................................................................................ 23 WHITENESS .................................................................................................................... 25 WHITE SOCIALIZATION .................................................................................................. 27 WHITE PRIVILEGE .......................................................................................................... 28 WHITE RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................... 30 THE HELMS MODEL OF WHITE RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT (WRID) .................. 32 Contact. ..................................................................................................................... 35 Disintegration. .......................................................................................................... 35 Reintegration............................................................................................................. 36 Pseudoindependence. ................................................................................................ 36 Immersion/Emersion ................................................................................................. 36 Autonomy. ................................................................................................................. 37 WHITE RACIAL IDENTITY ATTITUDES SCALE (WRIAS) ................................................ 37 ACTIVIST IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................... 38 RECONSTRUCTION VS. ABOLITION ................................................................................. 40 SOCIAL JUSTICE ALLY DEVELOPMENT ........................................................................... 41 WHITENESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION............................................................................... 43 SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................... 45 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY .................................................................................. 48 EPISTEMOLOGICAL