“This Is Not a Cotton Picker’s Dream”

Abstract

Neither the Supreme Court’s reapportionment rulings of the 1960s nor the issue of reapportionment more generally has received adequate attention in the recent scholarship of the “conservative turn” in American politics and society during the long post–World War II period. This article addresses the issue through the lens of the National Commission on Constitutional Government (NCCG), an anti-reapportionment lobby group headquartered in Jefferson City, Missouri, from 1964 to 1966. Much of the “states’ rights” rhetoric of the organization was unmistakably southern in origin, although NCCG leadership carefully avoided direct association with the segregationist cause and successfully appealed to a broad range of new conservative leaders and interests on a national scale, some of which were unlikely supporters of preserving “rural” power in state legislatures.