Michelle M. Nickerson. Mothers of Conservatism

Michelle M. Nickerson's carefully crafted study of grassroots conservative activists in Los Angeles County in the 1950s and early 1960s offers an important contribution to the scholarship on twentieth-century conservatism and women's political activism in the pre-Feminine Mystique (1963) “doldrums.” Like Lisa McGirr's Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (2001) and Donald Critchlow's Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade (2005), this study features self-identified housewives who built political careers and shaped national debates from the bottom up. They organized to oust a progressive school district superintendent in Pasadena; launched an attack on an adult enrichment program sponsored by the National Library Association for its “socialist slant”; campaigned to ban United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) literature, which they deemed tools of “internationalist indoctrination,” from the public schools; and lobbied against mental health bills out of fear that they would allow the incarceration of political dissenters like themselves. Nickerson draws attention to the religious fervor that these activists brought to their campaigns and to their opposition to racial desegregation. Highlighting the connections between Los Angeles activists and national networks of conservatives, and the widespread media coverage that their battles received, she also effectively shows the national significance of their campaigns.

Conservatism · Criminology · Grassroots · Ideology · Indoctrination · Media studies · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Public Administration