Anti-Communism, Race, and Structuration: Newspaper Coverage of the Labor and Desegregation Movements in the South, 1932–40 and 1953–61

The Southern labor and desegregation movements were organized at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee between 1932–40 and 1953–61, respectively. This historical sociology examines the role of journalism within the process of social reform by focusing on the labor and desegregation movements as racial “hot spots” of ideological tension and pragmatic transformation. A comparison of the relationship in news coverage in each movement period between the rhetoric of anti-Communism and the newspapers' normative fight against desegregation provides a point of critical analysis. In the interpretation of the resulting process of reforms, Anthony Giddens' (1984) theory of structuration supports the analysis of interactions between movement activists and their normative counterparts at the state's newspapers that ultimately produced social and institutional reforms.