Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women: Gender, Georgia, and the Growth of the New Right

Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women explores the role of white women in the history of conservatism, the New Right, and the Republican Party in Georgia, highlighting their political activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Robin M. Morris uses original interviews and archival research to reveal the motivations and actions that transformed the state from blue to red, focusing on the middle-class white women who consolidated and expanded their power and influence.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 30 October 2022
Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women is a comprehensive statewide study of women's role in the history of conservatism, the New Right, and the Republican Party in Georgia. Robin M. Morris delves into the growth of the Republican Party in the 1960s and 1970s, attributing it largely to the political activism of white women. The book begins with the African American women who founded the Georgia Federation of Republican Women and traces their loss of the organization and the party to white women moving to the Sunbelt South. Conservative white women developed a language and strategy of family values to combat school busing, defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, and elect Republican leaders, even in Jimmy Carter's home state. Morris utilizes original interviews and archival research in personal papers of women activists in the Georgia New Right movement, including Lee Ague Miller, Beth Callaway, Kathryn Dunaway, Lee Wysong, and Hattie Greene, to uncover the motivations and actions that transformed the state from blue to red. During this period, perceived threats to family life and traditional values led to grassroots organization that enabled significant political shifts at the state level. Conservative women carved out their political niche by consolidating and expanding their power and influence. Rather than a male-dominated, top-down approach, Morris focuses her historical account on the middle-class white women whose actions reshaped the political landscape of the state and ultimately the country.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780820360690