‘Outside agitators,’ a phrase from the civil rights era, resurfaces in Georgia governor’s race
WASHINGTON — It’s happening again in Georgia.
It’s an epic confrontation that has been building for years.
“Despite what you hear or read, the numbers are clear. While outside agitators disparage this office and falsely attack us, we have kept our heads down and remained focused on ensuring secure, accessible, and fair elections for all voters,” Kemp said in a statement through his state office website.
Kemp also announced that voter registration in the state had hit a record high of 6,915,000. “The fact is that it has never been easier to register to vote and get engaged in the electoral process in Georgia, and we are incredibly proud to report this new record,” Kemp said.
It was Kemp’s use of the term “outside agitators” that caught the attention of some historians in the state.
Brian Kemp refers to his critics as “outside agitators.” You can’t make this stuff up! https://t.co/jw5p2OK2SC
— Joe Crespino (@CrespinoJoe) October 11, 2018
Crespino told Yahoo News in an interview that the term is heavily freighted with racially charged meaning, dating to its use by pro-segregation leaders during the civil rights movement.
“The term ‘outside agitators’ has a long and complicated history in Southern politics. It was first used by opponents of labor unions back in the 1930s and ’40s, but it was quickly also applied to any kinds of groups that were advocating for greater civil rights and legal protections for African-Americans,” Crespino said. “So it became common from 1930s and ’40s onward for Southern politicians to label anybody who wanted to change the status quo in Southern politics as ‘outside agitators’ and to dismiss movements for civil rights as being instigated by people from the outside.”
But the term is freighted with history as a tool of discrediting civil rights leaders.
“If our white brothers dismiss as ‘rabble rousers’ and ‘outside agitators’ those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies — a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare,” King wrote from a jail cell in 1963.
Maddox was elected governor in 1966 on the strength of his fame for standing up against civil rights.
“‘Sheriff, I may be an agitator, but I’m not an outsider,’ I said. ‘I grew up only 50 miles from here, and I’m going to stay here until these people are allowed to register and vote.’”
Kemp did not respond to requests for comment about what informed his use of the term “outside agitators.” His official state and campaign press spokespeople did not return phone calls.
Crespino said he was “surprised that the use [of the term ‘outside agitators’] would be so blatant.”
“There are only two scenarios here. Either this is just a term that is in the back of [Kemp’s] mind and he doesn’t think about it. That’s unfortunate because it means he’s ignorant — that Brian Kemp doesn’t understand the long history of this term and how it’s been used,” Crespino said. “I think, given the way Brian Kemp ran his campaign in the primaries, that he used it with every intention and that he knew the kind of way that term resonates.”
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Posing with a pickup, Kemp boasted, “I got a big truck, just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself.”
Kemp reveled in the outrage his ad would provoke from some. “Yep, I just said that,” he cracked at the end of the ad. “If you want a politically incorrect conservative, that’s me.”
The AP report found that 70 percent of the 53,000 voters whose registrations were flagged as inconsistent with records at the state’s Department of Driver Services or with those on file at the Social Security Administration were African-American. The state’s population is 32 percent black.
“The Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them — you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines — if they can do that, they can win these elections in November. But we’ve got to do the exact same thing,” he said.
Crespino said the stakes feel high. “This is a historic election. It does feel weighty,” he said. “This is a test for Georgian voters to see whether there are folks in the middle who will stand up and say this is not right … that a secretary of state with the track record of Brian Kemp, being called out in the way that he is for very shady practices, it seems like a very reasonable moderate position to take to ask him to step down when he’s one of the two candidates in the race. This is not complicated.”
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