The Last True Believers

Abstract

From the early 1930s through the 1960s, the mainstream press in Tennessee relied on the narrative of anti-communism to oppose the labor and desegregation movements. But by 1965, The Knoxville Journal remained as the only newspaper of eight in the state to continue to prosecute the social changes promised by the Civil Rights Movement in those terms. This study applies James Carey's principle of combining mainstream and journalism history to interpret the social meanings of the news. By focusing coverage of the state legislature's last attempt to investigate alleged communist activity at the locally based Highlander Research and Education Center, this textual analysis of the Journal's coverage from 1965 to 1967 shows how the movement's changes were already inscribed on the state's dominant institutions a year before the movement ended in Memphis. The analysis interprets the negotiation of social change in terms of Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration.