Minute Women Vivian
| 👒 | |
| Era | The Fifties |
|---|---|
| Age | 52-59 |
| Home | Houston, TX |
| Demographic | Southern, white, clubwoman |
| Lean | segregationist |
| Race | white |
Vivian is a Houston society matron and a member of a Minute Women chapter who looks for subversion on the school board and in the public library. She represents the grassroots Red Scare of the white South, which fuses anti-Communism with segregation.
Who they stand for
The Minute Women of the U.S.A. were founded in Connecticut in 1949 and found their strongest base in Houston. From 1951, a chapter there made up of well-off wives, backed by oil money, took over school board elections, purged textbooks, and drove out the deputy superintendent George Ebey in 1953. They are one part of a larger movement that also includes the Daughters of the American Revolution, Pro America, the American Legion's Americanism committees, and the women who fought fluoridation and the United Nations in their local PTAs. Their party registration is Texas Democratic, but in practice they are Shivercrats, following Governor Allan Shivers in supporting Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 over the Texas tidelands dispute and over Communism. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, they joined forces with the segregationist Citizens' Councils. Their victories include the 1956 Texas referendum in favour of interposition, a doctrine that let the state defy federal desegregation orders, and the deployment of Texas Rangers to keep Mansfield's high school segregated. Senator McCarthy's censure by the Senate in December 1954 turned them against Eisenhower as well, and the John Birch Society, founded in 1958, is where their movement goes next.
Playing to them
Vivian responds well to visible vigilance. She wants loyalty oaths extended, security risks dismissed by the hundred, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover praised, Senator McCarthy given his committee and free rein, prayer defended in public schools, the United Nations kept at arm's length, and school segregation left to the Southern states. She does not respond to prosperity, tax cuts, or peace, and she cannot be separated from her segregationism, which she treats as the same cause as anti-Communism. She will not forgive any softening of this position. That includes a summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, a Senate censure of McCarthy, fluoride added to the water supply, a Justice Department lawsuit against a Texas school district, or a President who calls people like her extremists.
A President who does everything that wins Vivian's support loses the support of Garment Row Saul, Faculty Eleanor, South Side Marcus, Delta Pearl, and Barrio Tomás outright, and also loses the support of Banker Prescott and Junior Exec Chip, who want nothing to do with McCarthy. Air Base Andy wants the same enemy defeated but not by these methods, and stays only as long as the bomber programme keeps being funded.
Where they live
The five states where Minute Women Vivian makes up the largest share of the electorate in the fifties:
- Mississippi
- Alabama
- South Carolina
- Georgia
- Arkansas