The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 431

Book Reviews

many traditional politicians through interposition, the third party
movement of 1956, and Virginia's massive resistance proposal. He
describes that resistance movement as the work of neobourbons.
Bartley examines Texas Governor Allan Shivers' prevention of de-
segregation at Mansfield and Texarkana, perhaps the only successful
defiance of the federal law, a move which was not challenged and
which gained votes for Shivers in the East Texas piney woods country.
Bartley ignores, however, the political results of Attorney General
John Ben Shepperd's attempt to destroy the NAACP in Texas.
While the author is convinced that massive resistance was the work
of neobourbons, he believes that it continued because of inaction by
the President, Congress, and southern courts. It did not, however,
achieve its aims. Bartley concludes that "the willingness of political
leaders to resort to chicanery and suppression and the willingness of
the white community not only to tolerate but often to cooperate with
the extralegal vigilante activities of the citizens councils and other
groups evidenced a widespread lack of public commitment to the rule
of law and public ethics." In turn, this caused the Negro community
to lose confidence in law. He thinks it ironic that "white efforts to
subvert duly constituted authority, an action generally termed 'revo-
lutionary,' was now normally called 'conservative.' And Negroes were
branded as 'revolutionary' or 'subversive' for seeking enforcement of
law." One might add that cries for "law and order" in these circum-
stances also sound ironic.
Bartley's book provides a good review of events in the 1950's which
set the stage for the following decades, and which indicate the possible
trend toward decadence in a society that can be corrupted by con-
tagious racism.
Texas Southern University J. REUBEN SHEELER
Essays on Recent Southern Politics. Edited by Harold M. Hollings-
worth. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970. Pp. 115. $4.00.)
The three essays included in this volume comprise the fourth an-
nual Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures presented at the Uni-
versity of Texas, Arlington, in April, 1969. In the first essay "The
Power Structure and Southern Gubernatorial Conservatism," E. C.
Barksdale, employing a questionnaire method, shows that the power
structure in the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama invaria-

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