Both loved and despised: Uncovering a process of collective contestation in leadership identification

Abstract

Our critical examination of James Meredith’s leadership during the racial integration of higher education in the early 1960s reveals an important, missing companion to social endorsement in the leadership construction process: social contestation. Through the lens of moral conviction theory and using a combined ANTi-History/Microhistorical method, we analyzed over 250 letters written to James Meredith by opponents undergoing a process of social identification leading to collective hate and opposition of Meredith’s defiance to racial norms. Their shared moral conviction that what Meredith was doing was ‘evil’ worked in conjunction with the collective social endorsement of supporters to cement Meredith as a polemic leader of the racial integration movement and affect his leadership style. Therefore, leadership construction processes triggered by actors in defiance are underscored by both shared social endorsement and contestation.

Introduction

The leadership identification process is heavily influenced by the social context in which it takes place (Carroll and Levy, 2008; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Social actors, including potential leaders, co-construct designations of leadership through a back-and-forth progression in which followers affirm individuals’ claims to leadership (DeRue and Ashford, 2010; Reicher et al., 2005). Affirmations made by a leader’s supporters yield a collective endorsement and solidification of leadership positon. Oftentimes, a key trigger to the collective leadership endorsement process is an initial defiance by a leader against social norms, after which social actors begin granting support for a leader’s actions (Humphreys et al., 2015). However, given the element of defiance in the leadership construction process, we contend there likely exists a process of social contestation in addition to social endorsement, which simultaneously works to solidify an individual as a leader. Our aim in this study is to shed greater light on the somewhat ignored side of the socially constructed leadership process through analysis of the unique microhistory of James Meredith’s leadership in higher education racial integration in Mississippi from 1962 to 1964.

James Meredith became a key leadership figure in the United States Civil Rights Movement when, as an African American, he decided to apply and eventually enroll as a student at the historically segregated University of Mississippi. His actions garnered both praise and scorn (social endorsement and contestation) from the community. The socially endorsed facet of Meredith’s leadership has been thoroughly examined and used to extend theory on leadership construction (Humphreys et al., 2015). However, to complement this stream of research, we engage in a retracing of the people and events related to Meredith’s rise as a leader to uncover a latent process of social contestation underlying his identification as a leader. We define socially contested leadership as a social influence process that evolves when leader opponents engage in stereotyping or disputing the legitimacy of the leader’s social identity. Contested leadership may occur when opponents resist and sometimes hatefully reject the change that a leader, along with his or her supporters, brings to the organization or community.

In Humphreys et al.’s (2015) treatment of Meredith’s leadership, mostly social voices of support to his defiance of racial norms are analyzed as key to his collective endorsement. In passing, the authors acknowledged that many of the archived letters voice passionate contestations of his defiant actions. However, we argue that these contestations deserve critical scrutiny because they may reveal an untold history of Meredith’s recognition as a leader and his leadership development. Given that Meredith’s opponents and supporters were largely driven by convictions regarding the moral appropriateness of Meredith’s actions, we used moral conviction theory as our conceptual frame to analyze the letters of opposition to his integration at the University of Mississippi. Our analysis revealed a pattern consistent with established social identification processes of engendering collective hate based on shared convictions of contempt. We extend this framework to the leadership construction process by revealing how the latent collective hate against James Meredith actually worked in the background of collective support of his leadership.

Our analysis of the archived James Meredith letters located in the University of Mississippi library archives makes several important contributions to critical management and leadership research. We extend what we know about leadership construction processes (Burrow, 2015) by contending that collective leadership endorsement, as triggered by defiance actions, is accompanied by collective contestations or opposition. We take a critical stance toward the established discrete (e.g. transformational, servant, authentic, responsible) and relational qualifiers (e.g. plural, network, multilevel; Uhl-Bien, 2006) of leadership, and conceptualize leadership in terms of opposing, yet complementary facets. These related facets are complementary because ‘each is shaped by the other in subtle and overt ways’, so that one facet is defined by what the other one is not (Carroll and Levy, 2008: 75). Based on this conceptualization, we view leadership construction as a process of complementary facets in the form of social endorsement and contestation.

We also extend leadership research by showing how the process of social contestation can significantly alter leadership identity and changing leadership style and behavior. While previous work certainly includes models explaining social processes and leadership outcomes (e.g. Uhl-Bien, 2006), our study uniquely considers how leaders might fundamentally shift the way they view priorities, objectives, and styles based on the recognition of negative social voices. In particular, we find that as a leader, James Meredith saw himself as a needed leader to both his supporters and opponents. As such, he began paying greater attention to the perspectives of his detractors and reformed his style and approach to be viewed as a leader of change that might benefit both sides. Furthermore, his identity as a leader changed such that he believed he needed to shift his concerns from sometimes surface-level battles to affecting more deeply rooted sources of prevailing social problems. Finally, collective hate processes also influenced his perceptions of his leadership mission as more important than he previously thought and he became more devoted to his cause; seeing a higher purpose to his role as a leader.

In this study, we follow other narrative analyses of leadership (e.g. Watson, 2013) and focus on the contestation facet of Meredith’s leadership by following the actors of contestation (i.e. Meredith’s opponents) ‘to trace how they categorize other actors and how they hence produce meaning’ (Munzel, 2009: 879). We uncover how the actors of contestation exhibit contempt that triggers an identification process (Reicher et al., 2008). We combine ANTi-History and Microhistory as critical historiography of leadership to examine leadership beyond the received leader–followers frame by placing it within the constituents-in-a-polity frame. This view resonates well with the conceptualization of ‘organizations as polities—association of groups with evolving interests and resources’ (Weber and Waegar, 2017: 886).

We begin by introducing the abductive frame of our study, moral conviction theory, and explain Reicher et al.’s (2008) five-step process of social identification development that engenders collective hate. Next, we provide information on the combined ANTi-History and microhistorical method and present a brief life-story of James Meredith. We proceed to an examination of the ‘hate effects’ (Temkin and Yanay, 1988) of contesting leadership and uncover the latent stages of the collective hate formation process hidden in the letters. To conclude, we discuss our findings and their implications.

Theoretical framework

Moral conviction theory

Following suggestions by Maclean et al. (2017), we use moral conviction theory (Skitka, 2014) as our abductive framework (Dubois and Gadde, 2002; Folger and Stein, 2017) to unpack the contestation of Meredith’s leadership by his opponents. We assume their moral conviction, which is defined as a rigid sense of rightness or wrongness of an act, was a likely contributing shared factor to the strengthening of their group’s identity either directly or indirectly through a shared contempt. We made this assumption because in most of the contesting letters, James Meredith was perceived either as (1) a sinner violating the moral convictions of his contesting opponents (i.e. group believed presumptuously that it was God’s will not to allow Blacks to enroll in Ole Miss) or (2) as a traitor (i.e. a communist spy). The perceptions of Meredith as a sinner and as a spy led to his opponents’ shared view of his illegitimacy that justifies contestation of his leadership.

The choice of our abductive framework is supported by previous empirical findings indicating that moral conviction has its dark side (Skitka and Mullen, 2008). The dark side of moral conviction resonates with the phenomenon known as ‘the banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1963: 252). This phenomenon implies that some constituents in a local polity that unconsciously follow the shared unjust sentiments of others in their group may unconsciously, but not purposefully, act in an unjust manner. When the resulting dark side of individual moral conviction is shared in the local polity, its constituents may support major social injustices such as preventing racial integration in higher education of Mississippi. In some cases, this support of social injustice may lead to collective action reflecting collective hate. This hate evolves to the collective level when the group becomes engaged in preventing social change because dominant group members perceive that the change would violate their convictions about the accepted moral standards and threaten the collective identity that they perceive as shared in the local polity. In other words, as the dominant group-based hate unfolds due to the members’ shared perceptions of the violation defying their moral principles to which they are strongly committed, it becomes a social-psychological platform for their symbolic collective action. This platform may engender either covert or overt morally motivated protests manifesting collective hate by the dominant group members. These protests target the prototypical leader of the out-group because these leaders, such as Meredith, are perceived as a threat to the stability of the established social order (Dovidio et al., 2005). Prior research posits that collective hate toward the prototypical leader and his or her supporters evolves in stages (Reicher et al., 2008).

Five-step social identity process engendering collective contempt

Reicher et al. (2008) posited that in-group members tend to endorse hateful acts against the prototypical leader and other out-group members when out-group members appear to knowingly, and consciously, endorse what in-group members believe is morally wrong. If the extent of this endorsement is high, out-group members should be targeted with contempt. Contempt is an affective attitude of presenting individual others as lower in social status. This attitude implies the presenter’s status of superiority or supremacy contempt. However, contempt can be either appropriate (apt) or inappropriate (inapt) (Bell, 2013). For example, the inappropriate contempt is expressed in racist communities of presumed racial supremacy, whereas the appropriate contempt is a counter response to the inappropriate contempt (Arthur, 2007). Nevertheless, contempt is a value-laden person-focused evaluation of targeted others. In both cases, contempt can take an active form when its target is perceived and depicted as threatening. In this case, contempt breeds ‘moral hatred’ (Hampton, 1988: 80).

Moral haters tend to provide the reasons for their hatred publicly by presenting their targets as evil persons, either sinners or traitors, who do not meet the moral standards of the community. Moral hatred is characterized by mixed feelings urging moral action whether to persuade the target to withdraw from the community or remove the target by force (Greenspan, 2003). Collective moral hatred permeated with contempt is the core of racism. During the process of targeting out-group members with collective contempt, in-group members are individually ‘transformed by’ an emotional harmony through co-occurrence of emotions with other similarly minded in-group members with whom they share categorical convictions of what is morally right and what is morally wrong (Reicher et al., 2008: 1323).

Reicher et al. (2008) proposed a five-step social identity process that engenders collective hate. The five steps include (1) the creation of an in-group, (2) identification of individuals grouped outside the in-group, (3) assessment of the out-group as a threat or danger, (4) representation of the in-group as good and virtuous and the assertion of a need to defend such virtue, and (5) a celebration of defended virtue. We use this five-step process to extend our initial abductive framework of moral conviction. The five steps evolve because the accepted views of in-group psychology over-simplify the complex nature of individual identification within groups. Specifically, due to accepted views, group identity has an overtaking effect that overshadows individual identity, choice, and behavior. Proponents of these accepted views, however, neglect an option that a group may also provide a means through which true individual identity and actual choice can be exemplified. In other words, the true nature of a person is revealed mainly through his or her social identification and behavior within a group (Follett, 1918; Novicevic et al., 2007).

Reicher et al. (2008) argued that an important first step is identification through the assumption of a common social identity that is shared among group members. As this in-group focus provides psychological benefits to the group, these members may be willing to take extreme measures when defending their shared moral convictions. The process of the formation of the in-group engenders the boundaries of group membership. In our examination of the letters sent to James Meredith, we found traces indicating that the boundaries of the in-group membership were actually formed through the process of excluding members who do not share the same moral convictions from the in-group members. In other words, the membership of the in-group was defined by excluding members of the out-group (Reicher et al., 2008).

In steps 1 and 2, the process of excluding an individual or several individuals from the in-group entails not only placing them directly outside of the boundaries of the in-group but also denying them the appropriate status to access benefits afforded to in-group membership. In this way, exclusion from the in-group and the identification of in-group/out-group memberships involves making categorical contrasts between acceptable in-group characteristics and unacceptable out-group features. Reicher et al. (2008) provided an example how in the 1930s and 1940s, Nazis, members of the ruling Germany party, presumed that White Germans were ethnically superior to some other groups such as Jews, Slavs, or Roma gypsies. In effect, they considered the characteristics of Jews, Slavs, or gypsies residing in Germany unacceptable for their in-group membership. Therefore, they created a firm boundary of their in-group by excluding these specific ethnicities.

For step 3, Reicher et al. (2008) argued that to place a target outside of the in-group boundary lays the foundation for more involved, outward hostility toward the out-group members because in step 3, members of the in-group perceive the target as a threat to their own identity, existence, and way of life. For example, hostility toward illegal immigrants is often associated with beliefs that ‘they’ are taking away ‘our’ resources such as jobs or government benefits, while often not contributing to charities and sharing ‘our’ moral values, thus eroding the quality of our community life. At this stage, as the target is now perceived as a legitimate ‘problem’, the in-group members are actively signaling the danger that the target represents through warning statements about the target’s behavior that violates the established and accepted moral principles of the in-group.

Regarding step 4, Reicher et al. (2008) suggested that once the target has been unambiguously placed outside the boundaries of the in-group and identified as threat to the shared identity of the in-group, the members of the in-group may feel committed to protect their presumably violated moral concerns by taking a resolute action. Reicher et al. (2008) outlined the apparent paradoxical and dark nature of this commitment in the sense. On one hand, in-group members believe in their moral superiority over out-group members; whereas, on the other hand, this commitment may actually activate their wrongful or even evil behavior because of feeling morally ‘justified’ to defend a presumed in-group virtuous identity. Finally, for step 5, in the development of collective hate, there is celebration of the perceived defeat, or the likelihood of defeat of the targeted threat. In this step, members of the in-group glorify in their immoral imagination the inhumane symbolic actions as those that have to be undertaken against the out-group members to eliminate them as a threat.

Methodology

Examining the context of contestations, management and organizational historians suggest historical research can support efforts centered on understanding the interaction between individual behaviors and the context to improve theory (e.g. Rowlinson et al., 2014; Suddaby et al., 2014). However, this is a difficult task without engaging in academic labor attempting to maximize impartiality or objectivism. To address this concern, in the present study, we undertook steps of identifying appropriate sources and engaged in a source criticism.

We began by identifying and acquiring primary and secondary sources. As suggested by Kipping et al. (2014), we conceptualize our abductive frame by consulting primary and secondary sources (most of them crafted from primary sources) to understand the formation of actor-networks in the context of racial integration in higher education in Mississippi. Primary documents assembled from the Meredith Collection within the Ole Miss Special Collections provide insight about Meredith’s contested leadership revealed in negative correspondence written by critics, university and government officials, and attorneys. This correspondence reflects the textual self of first-person writing, which is a complex blend of fact and fiction involving both events that occurred and events retold that are difficult to research when a limited number of letters is available (Mimisson and Magnússon, 2014). Fortunately, the large quantity of these letters related to Meredith’s contested leadership allows for our use of abductive research (Dubois and Gadde, 2002; Folger and Stein, 2017). Supplemental information emerged from the Clarion Ledger, Mississippi Free Press, and other regional publications as well as national (e.g. New York Times) and African American newspapers (e.g. Chicago Defender). Newspapers, as primary sources, provided factual accounts through articles, letters to the editor, and editorials. It should be noted newspaper articles also served as secondary sources for interpretive reasons. Deephouse and Suchman (2008) highlighted the contribution of such media sources by recognizing them as capable of assisting research efforts that aimed to understand activities and perspectives as with or against social norms.

Secondary sources included an assortment of scholarly books (e.g. Eagles, 2009; Gallagher, 2012; Meredith, 1966; Meredith and Doyle, 2012) and peer-reviewed journals (e.g. Human Relations; Journal of Management History). Popular databases such as Lexis-Nexis Academic, Business Source Complete, HathiTrust Digital, and Google Scholar, among others, helped secure these resources. Overall, a wide range of sources were sought because neither primary nor secondary sources are immune from bias; however, together they communicate or expose information historical researchers position as data (Yates, 2014).

The nature of sources compelled the researchers to test the authenticity of the sources through a source criticism aimed to help prevent selection bias or the use of some information to advance a particular hypothesis (Golder, 2000; Rowlinson et al., 2014). Internally, each source was criticized for accuracy. As an example, the present study sought to determine if the document author was an expert through understanding their reputation, skill, experience, and access to resources signaling accuracy (Golder, 2000). External criticism primarily involved efforts to validate the authenticity of resources (i.e. not falsified). For instance, to establish reliability and substantiate validity, we examined the chronological listing of events within the established time period, the process to collect information, time span between events and documents, and the presence of potential social, economic, religious, or political bias (Golder, 2000). Following the source criticism, the analysis in the interpretation phase of the present study was conducted to understand Meredith’s contested leadership. For the analyses, the triangulation and classification of data were performed by the creation of a detailed timeline and organizing spreadsheet, which notably improved interpretation when the presence of dissonant data was uncovered (Rowlinson et al., 2014).

Following the actors of contestation

To examine the contestation, we followed the actors of contestation by combining ANTi-History and Microhistory approaches. The ANTi-History approach is useful because the ideology of a specific set of actors can be determined from the network relations in which human actors (e.g. the writers of the letters, Meredith, archivists) and objects (e.g. the archived letters and Meredith’s statue) were embedded (Durepos and Mills, 2018; Hennion and Muecke, 2016). Specifically, proponents of ANTi-History approach (Durepos and Mills, 2012) argue that it is possible to uncover alternative ways of knowing the past by developing an understanding of how actor-networks created trajectories for producing both known and ignored histories. This understanding is developed by (1) uncovering the history-producing actor-network composition and organization and reassembling their origins and (2) tracing back and forth and translating multiple trajectories that extend from the reassembled origins to the present (Mills and Durepos, 2010).

The present research began with identifying and examining roughly 250 contesting letters written by Meredith’s opponents. They were ordinary constituents networked together in the local polity and bonded by their shared racist ideology, collective contempt of Meredith, and everything he implicitly represented as the symbolic leader of the racial integration movement. While analyzing the letters through our ANTi-History lens, we felt that the letters influenced us to redefine their materiality as the bundles of relations that problematized our traditional knowledge of the told past and published history of Meredith’s leadership as only socially endorsed. Due to this influence, we examined how the culture of local polity was projected onto the letters in a different manner that was contesting Meredith’s leadership as being fabricated rather than socially endorsed.

Gazing at the letters through an ANTi-History lens, we sensed the absence of some parts of the past related to Meredith’s contested leadership missing in the present. Therefore, we traced back the trajectories of the actor-networks that produced them expecting to fill in the void left by the absent past. We conducted the tracing because we believe hidden remains in the letters detailing a contestation of Meredith’s leadership reflect relations of past actor-networks. Our goal was to (re)assemble these traces in the ways that transform our sense of the absent past, so that we could uncover how the past might be told in an alternative but transformed way that would change the told and untold history of Meredith’s leadership. Specifically, when we retrospectively (Marshall and Novicevic, 2016) examined these traces in the letters of Meredith’s opponents, the latent themes of contesting his leadership began to emerge taking the form of an expressed collective contempt. In the end, the multiplicity of histories that were produced by the actor-networks (i.e. actor-nets) were grouped accordingly: (1) those that are critical-contesting and (2) those that are vindicatory-endorsing of different versions of the past.

In our examination of the actor-nets (Czarniawska, 2004) encompassing Meredith’s contested leadership, we employ Magnússon’s (2003) Microhistory method. Microhistory is a qualitative method of examining extraordinary past events, exemplary individuals, and unique communities and polities by scrutinizing snippets of information about them that are preserved in the archived historical sources (Ginzburg, 2014). Microhistory is broadly compatible with ANTi-History (for specific fusion of microhistory and ANTi-History, see Mills, 2017) as Microhistories are themselves located at the center of actor-networks aiding with embedded actors, records, readers, and archivists that have the capacity to produce untold history (Magnússon, 2015). This assumption is grounded in the fact that while microhistorians directly select, script, and interpret traces of the past left as incomplete historical sources, other actors may be engaged indirectly (Simon, 2015).

Microhistory is conducive to both the ‘singularization of history’ in leadership studies and the adoption of an actor-network form of producing history through the ‘interplay of events, narrative (conscious and unconscious), analysis (conscious and unconscious), and new events that appear as life moves, forward’ (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 135). In this study of Meredith’s contested leadership, our primary gaze is focused on ‘the textual environment’ of the contesting letters’ content and on the embedded meanings shared by the constituents of the local polity that wrote the letters. In other words, we do not subscribe unconditionally to the top-down told history of Meredith’s leadership role (Eagles, 2009). Rather, our singularization of history is focused on observing and investigating interesting networked relations by viewing them not as an isolated object but as a binding subject capable of producing alternative histories that branch out from the ‘soil of the past’ (Szijarto, 2014).

We focused our abductive frame on discerning ‘self-similarity’ (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013) between ignored traces found in the contesting letters sent to Meredith and their potential to fill in the void of the absent past of Meredith’s socially constructed leadership. Herein, we are not looking for patterns that might fit the dominant historical narrative of Meredith’s leadership but for differences that might reveal its alternative histories and the underlying concepts, which can be uncovered based on our abductive frame and our acquired knowledge of the context. In this process of tracing differences, it is important to emphasize that we have been self-restrained by a sense of responsibility as scholarly personae committed to exhibiting professional epistemic virtues of organization and leadership historians (Hennion, 2010).

Results

Uncontested life history of James Meredith

Born in 1933, on a farm in Kosciusko, Mississippi, James Howard Meredith grew up with the aspiration to attend the University of Mississippi (i.e. ‘Ole Miss’), the state’s flagship public university (Meredith, 1966). However, like many African Americans in mid-1900s, Meredith struggled to overcome the challenges of living in a racially segregated community that offered few paths of success for minorities. Therefore, following his graduation from a segregated high school, Meredith enlisted in the United States Air Force where he served from 1951 to 1960. After his military service, Meredith returned to Mississippi to further his education by temporarily attending Jackson State University. Yet, Meredith’s attendance was brief at Jackson State because he could not shake off the images and his lifelong interest in Ole Miss’ storied football program. Beyond football, he discovered other sources of inspiration to pursue admission at Ole Miss. For example, President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961, emphasizing freedom and making an impact for the good of the country, inspired Meredith to take a stand against racial inequalities in higher education and become a beacon of the Civil Rights Movement. Eventually, he decided to apply for admission at Ole Miss, the historically all-White institution of higher education (Gallagher, 2012; Meredith and Doyle, 2012).

The initial Ole Miss offer of admission extended to Meredith was later revoked once his race was discovered. When his second attempt was denied, he filed a lawsuit against the university and the State of Mississippi. The lawsuit triggered a high-profile back-and-forth ruling in federal courts, with the federal courts ruling either in favor of Meredith or in favor of the State of Mississippi. At the same time, influenced by Governor Ross Barnett, the State passed legislation preventing Meredith’s admissions and the university’s desegregation. After multiple threats, pleadings, and back-door dealings sponsored by both Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President John Kennedy, Meredith eventually stepped onto the university’s main campus to begin classes in September of 1962. However, soon thereafter, a viscous riot caused by his presence on campus ensued. Therefore, US Marshals, military police, and even the National Guard were ushered in to keep the peace (Eagles, 2009).

During his first year on the Ole Miss campus, Meredith quietly attended his classes jointly with his armed escorts. However, by the second year, he became much more outspoken about his intentions to break down racial barriers. He wrote articles, spoke at town halls, and was interviewed by reporters to make public his beliefs about the reality of (de)segregation and the great racial injustices he and others faced. Due to his presence in the public limelight, Meredith received hundreds of letters from supporters of his actions that were socially endorsing his leadership in the Civil Rights movement (Humphreys et al., 2015). Less known, however, are the hundreds of letters in opposition to his actions. The letters written to him contesting Meredith’s leadership were donated by James Meredith and reside in the Special Collection archives at the University of Mississippi. The letters are arranged as ‘negative correspondence’ in the Series 2 paper, Box 3 covering the years of 1962–1964. The letters were previously separated by Meredith as negative or non-supportive before donation to the library. We analyze these letters using the ANTi-History/Microhistory approach as a vehicle to view contested leadership and reveal the latent processes underlying its conceptualization.

Shared moral conviction in the letters sent to Meredith

Meredith’s opponents were morally convinced that he was wrong in his attempts to de-segregate Ole Miss. In their minds, he should have been recognized as a destructive threat to most constituents of the local polity. Their shared moral conviction that Meredith threatened their religion and patriotism made the dominant group members antagonistic and uncompromising toward Meredith as the out-group community members’ prototype leader. The dark side of Meredith’s opponents’ moral conviction was engendered by their racist ideology that not only consumed their minds and permeated their emotions but also blinded their moral judgment. The salient outcome of this strongly shared contemptuous attitude was their increased resistance toward racial integration in institutions of higher education of Mississippi and their resolute contestation of Meredith’s exemplary leadership in championing this integration.

The dark side of their shared moral conviction nudged the members of the contesting social group to erect a dividing wall of collective contempt around their shared moral concerns. They wanted to separate themselves from Meredith whom they viewed as a destructive sinner and opportunistic anarchist who committed treason and acted sinfully against God’s will. In other words, they shared a moral conviction that Meredith engaged in harmful acts supporting unjust interests of his in-group members without exhibiting any due respect for the authority of the governor and the traditional institutional and social order in Mississippi. Evidently, their most protected sacred foundational values were grounded in their shared sense of religious and social purity condemning perceived Meredith’s sin and betrayal. These constituents of the dominant group presumed that they spoke on behalf of their community when attempting to naturalize the racist privileged power of being White in the local polity. By asserting the presumed superiority of Whiteness in their religious and patriotic discourse, they racialized and contested Meredith’s socially constructed leadership. Although Meredith viewed his Choctaw Native American identity as equally important to his social identity, their discourse disregarded any other option for social identity ‘beyond black and white dichotomy’ (Liu and Baker, 2008: 440).

Collective contempt in the letters written by Meredith’s opponents

We initially assembled the letters from James Meredith’s opponents in a chronological sequence with the intent to examine potential, gradual evolution of a unifying theme of shared moral conviction. However, we soon discovered that moral conviction is an elusive actant to trace because it virtually erases its traces in its trajectories (Krarup and Blok, 2011). Specifically, Krarup and Blok (2011: 48) argued that

whenever moral convictions, in analogy with the hammer, ‘does something’ in a given situation, it satisfies the Latourian definition of an actant. But can the foldings and the workings of moral convictions be pursued, traced, mapped, in just the same way as that of the hammer?

Morality, we want to argue, ‘erases its traces’, and, by analogy, so too does other intangible social phenomena like affects and beliefs. Therefore, we reassembled the letters, shifting our abductive frame to contempt, which is manifested in its racist form in the letters. Upon making this shift, we uncovered that the racist contempt manifested explicitly in the letters contesting Meredith’s leadership triggered a staged trajectory of the authors’ collective hate (Mills et al., 2014). We used Reicher et al.’s (2008) five-step social identity process to capture the trajectories of collective hate exhibited by local constituents who, in their letters, contested James Meredith’s leadership role in the racial integration process at the University of Mississippi.

Steps 1 and 2—creating a cohesive in-group through exclusion of an out-group member

The first step in the process leading to the development of collective hate is the informal, symbolic formation of an in-group in which the group aspect of social identity is formed throughout the group membership. We found patterns of the in-group delineation appear drawn along three distinct boundaries: religious, racial, and political (articulated in patriotic terms). The first religious boundary of the in-group excludes Meredith as a godless sinner who does not belong to the group of perceived righteous followers of God’s will. Multiple letter writers, who were Meredith’s opponents, refer to Meredith’s behavior as misaligned with Christian conduct and God’s will. Several of the letter writers use the phrase ‘As a Christian, I am writing to you’ implying the in-group virtue of true religiosity was not possessed by Meredith and his followers who are placed outside of the in-group.

The authors of these letters then go on to insinuate that Meredith’s behavior places him outside the religious boundary. For example, one writer questions Meredith’s Christian behavior, stating, ‘I am sure you are not in God’s will’ (6,2,19). ¹ In another letter, the author writes several pages to detail that Meredith’s action violates Christian norms, and therefore cites biblical passages to guide Meredith to get back on the path of God (6,2,24). This letter further highlights the perception shared among his opponents that Meredith is outside of the goodness of the Christian, God-fearing in-group. As another letter writer points out, Meredith has not followed Christ’s moral example in that Christ recognized when and where he was not wanted and peaceably removed himself from such situations. In contrast, Meredith forcefully pushes his agenda on those who do not want him around (6,3,3).

The religious boundary is also emphasized when the authors of the letters ask Meredith to pray for forgiveness, change his ‘sinful’ ways and come back to God’s fold. Specific phrases used in the letters include, ‘If you accept Christ as your Savior, pray to him for guidance in what you should do’ (6,2,2), ‘have you talked to God’ (6,1,3), ‘I am praying you will repent and call upon the Lord now’ (6,2,6), ‘How do you think you look in God’s eyes’ (6,11, 2), and ‘Ask God to forgive you for causing all this trouble’ (6,11,15). Through these phrases, the in-group members hint that Meredith could actually become part of the accepted group if he were willing to conform to the group’s norms for what its members perceive to be good Christian behavior. In one of the letters, the writer symbolically depicts the distinction between Meredith’s and Christian behavior through a picture of a fake check which is made out to ‘Whosever Believeth’ from the ‘Bank of Eternal Life’ for ‘the sum of Eternal Life’ and signed by ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’ (6,2,19).

The second boundary separating Meredith as the exemplary representative of the out-group from the in-group is race. Two antagonist letters, written in an attempt to solidify the White race as presumed proxy for the goodness of the in-group, convey to Meredith ‘there is place for you, but not with white people … why don’t you go where you are welcome’ (6,1,5) ‘you aren’t fit to associate with whites’ (6,1,8). Several of the antagonist letter writers draw the in-group/out-group racial boundary by claiming that as the White race is divinely appointed as a superior race, Meredith ought to know that the boundary is God’s doing. For instance, they tell Meredith that, ‘you should know that if God wanted you to mix with white people, he would have made you white’ (6,2,14), ‘God made Negroes black to keep Negroes with Negroes’ (6,10,10), and ‘God didn’t intend the races to mix … return to your own … and you will gain the respect of most white people’ (6,13,13). These statements clearly communicate the behest that Meredith is excluded from the in-group because of his racial makeup.

Some other letter writers contesting Meredith’s leadership raise the in-group boundary in a racialized manner by placing Meredith not only outside the White race but also outside a segment of the Black race. In one of these letters, the writer explains that some African Americans, such as Booker T. Washington, are considered part of the in-group because they ‘have done something to help not only the negro but the whole world … because they built instead of tearing down’ (6,2,16). Several letters explain that some other African Americans do not approve of Meredith’s actions and therefore part of the in-group allows for inclusion of Blacks as long as they know of their place as ‘owing everything to the white man’ (6,2,13) and realizes ‘the good ole southern negro knows their place and are happy being with their own color’ (6,12,19). The writers of the letters also emphasize how detrimental to African American discontent is Meredith’s leadership. For example, one writer states, ‘I don’t think even negroes … appreciate what you have done’ (6,2,4), while another states, ‘I am all for negroes … but when one negro begins to make trouble for his fellow negroes as well … he’s gone too far’ (6,2,25), and finally an author claiming to be African American, exclaims, ‘why has you done this awful thing to your people … you is a disgrace to our race’ (6,13,18).

A final boundary distinguishing the in-group from Meredith is the political boundary drawn along patriotic lines. With this boundary, angst toward Meredith is spurred by attributions that his actions are inherently ‘un-American’ and disturbing to the in-group members of good American citizens. For example, one writer asks Meredith, ‘is this something a good American … a first-class citizen would do?’ (6,2,8). Others claim, ‘I think if you were such a good American as you claim you are, that you would prove it by staying away …’ (6,3,6), and ‘You are not American … I pray the boys will give you a swift … hanging back home where real Americans will hate you like my neighbors do’ (6,3,2), while another writer tells Meredith that he plans to write a letter to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to inform them of Meredith’s un-American behavior (6,3,8). In addition, some members of the in-group reinforce the political boundary by labeling Meredith’s actions not only as generally un-American but also specifically as communist. Several of the letters suggest that Meredith is either a communist himself or is at least being financially supported by ‘communistic’ actors (6,2,16). One writer questions him, ‘why don’t you admit you are being backed by the Communist’ (3,6,11). While several others claim that they are ‘sure the whole thing is Communist inspired’ (6,2,8), or that Meredith is a ‘secret Communist hoping to disrupt internal security’ of the United States (6,2,11), and that his behavior ‘has received the approval of Castro’ (6,2,34).

Step 3—Identifying the out-group member as a threat to in-group

Many of the letter writers depict Meredith as some type of disturbing menace causing trouble and endangering the livelihood of in-group members. Representative statements in many of the letters include reference to Meredith’s potential troublemaking disturbing the in-group, such as being in ‘the class of professional agitators’ (6,1,4), and a ‘contemptible troublemaker’ (6,2,35), and asking ‘why cause … so much trouble’ (6,1,7). One writer even addresses his letter to, ‘James H. Meredith, trouble causer’ (6,11,27). Others suggest that Meredith simply wants attention in Mississippi where he is not wanted, and that is why he enrolled at Ole Miss and not at Harvard (6,3,9). Furthermore, one writer clearly depicts Meredith as a threat to the greater well-being and happiness of the in-group by stating, ‘you want … to see how much unhappiness, misery and heartache you can bring upon nice folks’ (6,1,8). Most writers appear to view Meredith as a threat because of his supposed forceful behavior to enroll at Ole Miss instead of acting more peacefully. The letters stated, ‘you have bulldozed your way into where you are not wanted’ (6,2,13), and ask ‘why can’t you pick another University instead of barging into one where you are not wanted’ (6,11,8).

Permeating the letters contesting Meredith’s leaderships are accusations laying blame on Meredith for fueling the potential for conflict between Whites and Blacks. For example, one writer claims, ‘frankly, I think what you did has worsened white-negro relations’ (6,10,11). Others argued Meredith’s actions would result in ‘a bloody war [of] negro against white’ (6,13,15), and that he was ‘building a wall of hate between the two races’ (6,12,6). The in-group members also claimed he was already morally responsible for harm and danger to the in-group and society in general. One writer accused Meredith of causing ‘death and destruction’ (6,12,5). Furthermore, this is emphasized to the extreme in statements such as, ‘how does it feel to be a killer …’ (6,11,11), ‘you have caused bloodshed’ (6,1,3), ‘you have blood on your hands … you have caused the death of two people’ (6,2,20), ‘two men have died because of your intrusion’ and that his actions had disturbed ‘millions of innocent people’ (6,11,17).

The writers of these letters frequently depict Meredith as a threat by comparing him metaphorically to dangerous wild animals. For example, he is compared to a ‘gorilla’ and a ‘beast’ capable of causing harm to others (6,13,19). In the same vein, one writer ‘advises’ Meredith to ‘be a man, not a rat’ (6,11,2), while another refers to him as an ‘ape’ with an intent for ‘robbing, killing, and raping’ (6,13,10). Other writers made references to Meredith as a ‘jungle savage, primitive, wild, vicious, fearful, [and] ferocious’ (6,12,18) and a ‘wild, screaming savage’ (6,11,29). Another disturbing image is a picture drawn on the front and back of one of the letters. The first image is a man holding out his arms with the caption reading, ‘I’ve missed you …’ while the back image depicts a man in a hunter’s cap laying down on his stomach with a rifle and scope aimed at the man and the caption reading ‘… but I’ll take better aim’ (6,1,1) insinuating that Meredith is a menace that must be stopped by ending his life.

Step 4—acting to defend the virtue of the in-group

In the case of James Meredith, perceiving themselves as legitimized to judge who are good Christians and good Americans, the members of the in-group felt morally convicted that they should defend themselves against the apparent perceived threat of Meredith’s godless and un-American behavior by taking action in a variety of resolute forms. The in-group members took a symbolic resolute action to defend their moral concerns by penning letters to Meredith and asking him to recognize the inappropriateness of his actions. The members of the in-group felt obliged to write the letters to protect their own presumed goodness and the American South. For example, several letters often begin with phrases such as ‘the reason for my writing is twofold. I love my country and I love all its people, but you are doing a grave wrong’ (6,2,17), ‘I have been listening to the terrible news of trouble … now I come to you by letter’ (6,2,5), and one author states she had to write because ‘I love America and the south’ (6,2,12). Another indirect form of symbolic action is undertaken by a number of writers who exhibited their presumed moral superiority by communicating their intent to pray for Meredith to change his ways. One in-group member wrote, ‘I will pray for you’ (6,2,2), and another stated, ‘I beg and pray for you’ (6,2,32), and finally, ‘I pray each day you will show your soul is whiter than your skin’ (6,10,1).

While several letters illustrate more peaceable acts of defense such as writing to ask Meredith to stop his actions and praying for him to change, many members of the group threaten to cause Meredith harm and, even death, with a conviction that it is a morally defensible action to protect the shared identity and values of in-group. One particular in-group member wrote 12 pages of text describing his duty to protect the goodness of the White race from Meredith through various actions such as newspaper campaigning, lobbying the government, and engaging in violence (6,3,8). Another writer crudely shouts at Meredith, ‘Drop dead you damn black bastard’ (6,13,2), while others threaten him ‘you’re not wanted … we plan to kill you … Out, or we will kill you’ (6,13,19), ‘If you value your … life, do not attempt enrolment again’ (6,13,20), ‘if de whites don’t get you da communist will and if they don’t we will … if you don’t get out may your soul rest in hell’ (6,12,2), and ‘we shall burn you alive to a stake … we will get you’ (6,11,19). A demeaning threat is depicted on a newspaper clip included in one of the letters showing Meredith being booed as he emerges in the sunlight with vile profanities being hurled toward him while a cute coed asks, in a serious bewildered tone: ‘why doesn’t someone kill him?’ (6,12,18). One writer chose to poetically threaten Meredith by writing, ‘roses are red, violets are blue, I killed one negro, I may make it two’ (6,13,9) while another even claims, ‘a voodoo doll has been set in motion for you’ (6,11,23).

Step 5—celebrating defense of in-group virtue

Several angst-filled and hate-filled letters written to Meredith provide chilling examples of in-group constituent members reveling in the eventual elimination of the target; as one writer exclaimed, ‘I hope something awful happens to you’ (6,2,9). Other writers blatantly demonstrate their eagerness for Meredith’s demise such as, ‘I do not wish you to be murdered … if it should happen there will be no tears, I am sure’ (6,2,35), ‘Go home before you get killed … although that is what you need’ (6,2,36), and ‘here’s to hoping that if you lived to read this, that you won’t last much longer’ (6,2,22). Finally, one writer vividly exemplifies the eulogizing of the potential inhumanity against the targeted Meredith by concluding, ‘millions of people would rejoice at your death’ (6,11,22).

The effects of social contestation to Meredith’s leadership identity

The voices of those morally opposed to Meredith’s actions to attend the historically all-White University of Mississippi had a significant and lasting effect on the way Meredith viewed his rise as a leader in both movements for educational integration and civil rights in general. We analyzed several books and articles penned by Meredith and uncovered three distinct changes he saw in his leadership role. First, he began to view himself as a leader not only for those who supported his efforts to change the status of African Americans but also those who fiercely opposed him. Second, he saw himself in an expanded role as a leader with more wide reaching objectives to not only affect change in the admittance of African Americans to all-White colleges and universities but to fundamentally altering the status of African Americans in the United States. Third, he became more convinced than ever that his mission to lead change in the lives of African Americans was divinely appointed—that his very life itself was appointed to him to undertake a leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement.

To the first point of change, Meredith realized that he could change very little without finding ways to appeal to those who hated him. Because so many vehemently disagreed with his behavior, he began to identify himself as a leader for social change for all people (both those who loved him and those who despised him) and as a person without ties to one particular social group. At one point, Meredith stated that

… I want to make it clear that I speak as an individual … I do not pose as a leader of any group or school of thought, save those who coincidently agree with me, nor do I pose as a spokesman for my race. But I speak as a citizen of Mississippi, the United States, and the world. (Meredith, 1966: 307)

In this way, he hoped his opponents might see him as someone who could improve the lives of both Blacks and Whites in America through his leadership for change. Because of the content of the contestation letters, Meredith was keenly aware that only by finding solutions for both sides would his purposes be accomplished and real change might occur. He positioned,

I am aware of another fact: if I were a white man, I would not give up my favored position unless there was an extremely good reason. The greatest hope for a major change in the basic status of the Negro is to convince the American whites that it is in their best interests. It is my firm conviction that the solution must result in the material improvement of both groups concerned—the oppressors as well as the oppressed. (Meredith, 1966: 21)

Interestingly, Meredith established a pattern of championing both supporters and opponents. He once endorsed Ross Barnett’s gubernatorial bid despite the history of contempt and animosity Barnett had consistently shown to Meredith. He knew that in order to lift up his African American community, he had to find ways to entreaty those who oppressed and therefore his leadership identity and style shifted to finding ways to accomplish his mission by attending to those who opposed him.

Similarly, in conjunction with the contestation process, Meredith saw himself a leader for more than his initial purposes to aid in the integration of African Americans into predominantly White schools. In his 2012 memoirs, he noted that he wished he ‘could have done more to advance the cause of Mississippians, white and black’ (Meredith and Doyle, 2012: 245). He realized that the issue of integration was more deeply rooted in the status of African Americans as second-class citizens and that his expanded leadership role needed to include fighting for all oppression, not just that of African Americans. Meredith began to look for opportunities to change root causes of issues instead of fighting battles with limited effects. Perhaps this is most evident in his recognition that real change would come legislatively and therefore began working more closely with government leaders. He writes,

I should add that I believe the real heart of the problem is the lack of clear and effect legislation. Whereas the government may or may not be operating at its limits, nevertheless, if it did all that was possible under the present laws, it would still not be enough. (Meredith, 1966: 306)

Meredith realized that simply gaining entrance into Ole Miss was not enough to create lasting change for African Americans especially given the detestation found within his opponents’ letters. He knew that fundamentally changing life for African Americans was the ultimate goal and that only through improving the laws of the land would opponents change their beliefs.

Finally, the contesting letters also seemed to have impacted Meredith’s view of his leadership calling as ordained by God. Given that many of the letters specifically point out that Meredith was considered by many as working against God’s will, this is an interesting effect on his identity as a leader. However, the ungodly pronouncements only deepened Meredith’s resolve to please God through his actions. He stated that

I’m using all my energy to do what I think God sent me here to do. He wants me to be a messenger … I have a divine responsibility to transform America to make it a better place for our children and grandchildren … (Meredith and Doyle, 2012: 244)

The contesting letters then did little deter Meredith’s faith in his appointed mission and in fact strengthened his commitment to his cause, helping him find even more meaning and purpose to his objectives.

Discussion

By combining ANTi-History approach and Microhistory method in our abductive analysis of over 250 opposition letters sent to James Meredith, we have revealed a social identity process of leader evaluation that engendered collective contempt and hate contesting Meredith’s leadership. The analysis of Meredith’s contested leadership uncovered how his opponents erected boundaries protecting their in-group membership in the community and called for the exclusion of Meredith from their community as an un-Christian, un-American, and morally inferior prototypical leader of out-group members. These in-group members saw Meredith not only as a negative embodiment of out-group members’ characteristics but also as a threat to their shared identity. Therefore, they sought to protect their moral concerns by acting through letter writing, praying to God for Meredith to change, and threatening harm and death to Meredith.

We uncovered that the contesting letters were ideological tools of ordinary constituents in the local polity. Opponents wrote letters to assert their resistance to the disruptive effects of social change exemplified by Meredith’s leadership of racial integration. This initial resistance eventually evolved into a form of collective contempt and hate against normalization of racial integration process in higher education of Mississippi. Through their letters, these constituents of the local polity wanted to express their support for the traditional, yet unjust societal norms sustaining racial supremacy of their in-group, as well as their opposition to the norms sustaining integration of out-group members whose prototypical leader was Meredith. In other words, using letters as material conduit of their message, they wanted to initiate a community discourse of contesting Meredith’s leadership and to reshape the interface between public and private spheres of the local polity to their norms by sharing the sentiment of collective hate within their in-group in the polity.

Our study makes several important contributions to leadership and history literatures. We complement prior research on socially endorsed leadership (Humphreys et al., 2015), by highlighting the complementary facets (socially endorsed and contested) of the leadership process. In other words, we contribute to leadership theory by uncovering that both collective endorsement and contestation from the local polity are important to the identity construction process of a leader (Humphreys et al., 2015). The contesting facets reflect collective opposition from the broader social environment that has an important role in the leader identification process. Specifically, we uncovered the process through which collective leadership opposition in the social environment can be captured. By using Reicher et al.’s (2008) five-step collective hate process as an organizing frame, we uncovered that the opposing group developed a social identity of shared hatred toward Meredith as a socially endorsed leader. These collectively opposed constituents were morally convinced based on their religious, racial, and political orientations that Meredith’s actions were so grievous and in contrast to their in-group moral norms that they believed that their harsh words and threats were justified enough to be written in letters contesting Meredith’s leadership.

Furthermore, we find that the process of social contestation may have interesting effects on a leader’s identity and future leadership behavior and approach. The complementary facets of endorsement and contestation can influence a leader’s view of self as not just a leader of those in support but also as a leader of change in to the opposition. Leaders may redefine themselves perhaps more broadly, thereby focusing on how to find solutions to problems that benefit supports and opponents alike. Similarly, contestation processes can influence leaders to see themselves as necessary for creating change at a higher level than previously intended. In other words, as leaders face intense opposition, they may resolve that their influence can reach a greater number of people or solve a greater number of problems than they may have originally set out to address. Finally, leadership contestation can provoke greater resolution and meaning to a leader’s mission. Powerful social hostility might effectively result in leaders viewing their mission as their life’s great work or calling.

Our study also illustrates how the ANTi-History approach and Microhistory method can be instrumental to future theoretical development in leadership and in-group/out-group relations. We focus on the microhistory of letters but recognize that the letters and their authors are related actors, and that moral conviction, contempt, and collective hate are related actants. We collapse the multiple levels commonly addressed by ANTi-History to the micro level recognizing that the impact of the context is mapped onto this level where the racist voices of ordinary people reveal an untold history, whereas in the told history voices are granted primarily to the elite actors (Eagles, 2009).

We also contribute to the social influence literature related to hate studies (Harrington, 2004). We found that racist contempt and shared moral conviction influence an aversive identity/race-based categorization that contributes to the emergence of collective hate as extreme prejudice. In other words, when identity/race-based social categorization is based on presumed righteous negative feelings about the targeted out-group, racists are likely to internalize these feelings and these perceptions of the out-group as threats become normalized in their mind-sets. In effect, ‘general feelings of intergroup threat can be a catalyst for the transformation of aversive racism into the open, dominative form characterized by racial antipathy and hatred’ (Dovidio et al., 2005: 221). As a result, out-group members are dehumanized as evil and deserving of contempt, hate, and aggression. To prevent this process from emerging, it is necessary to nudge all community members to focus on their communal rather than racial identity as their primary social identity.

This shift in focus requires suppression of the following three components of hate: (1) enactment of a firm boundary between the in-group and out-group and the rejection of possible intergroup closeness, (2) passionate and angry fixation that the other group should be viewed as a threat to the established communal values and moral norms, and (3) disparaging contempt for the group whose members should be excluded from the community (Sternberg and Sternberg, 2008). In his books (Meredith, 1966; Meredith and Doyle, 2012), Meredith did not respond with hatred to the racist collective hate communicated to him. Rather, he virtually followed the advice of Bell (2013: 198) who argued ‘the best way of answering racist contempt is by responding with an apt contempt’ because the request for the recognition of racial supremacy does not deserve a civil discourse (Colaiaco, 2006; Arthur, 2007). Responding to the race-based contempt and hatred by an appropriate counter-contempt, the target rejects any discourse of supremacy because it would disgrace everyone. In other words, racists should not be considered worthy of esteem and civil dialogues because it would grant legitimacy to the discourse of supremacy (Calhoun, 2000), thus jeopardizing the sense of self-worth among the targeted community members.

Our study gives rise to a number of opportunities for future research. The discovery of the important socially contested component of leadership signals the need for greater theorizing of contested leadership processes; in particular, social-change-oriented leadership. For example, our analysis reveals the potentially impactful efforts of shared moral convictions associated with hatred toward out-group members. However, less understood are the social, contextual conditions of the relationships between internalization of social identities, moral convictions regarding social change, and the contestation of leaders of positive social change. Previous research suggest that moral conviction is primarily issue driven such that members of an in-group feel victimized by cultural transformations which challenge their moral standing (Young and Sullivan, 2016). In these situations, privileged social groups often feel obligated to act to defend their moral convictions in sometimes extremist ways (Klar, 2016), such as the Meredith hate letters. Greater theoretical and empirical support is needed in order to make predictions regarding when and why in-group members internalize feelings of victimhood, develop a shared identity around shared moral convictions, engage in collective hate processes, and outwardly contest socially endorsed leaders of social change. Greater understanding of contested leadership processes might also aid in the prediction of other important organizational and social outcomes such as targets of dehumanization (Haslam and Stratemeyer, 2016).

In addition, our combining of ANTi-History approach and Microhistorical method provides a useful guide for future researchers as a lens through which past events can be alternatively viewed to reveal new patterns and insights that were previously unknown. We encourage scholars to apply this approach to previously studied cases and events in hopes of uncovering and illuminating potentially untold stories and histories to provide a more complete understanding of history. Furthermore, our combined approach allows scholars to retroactively trace the social construction and contestation of leadership, as well as identify how the twists and turns of historical context can shape our deeper understanding of the underlying processes (Mckinlay, 2006). In essence, this approach aids in bridging the divide between history and organizational leadership research (Greenwood and Bernardi, 2014). We encourage scholars to draw on this approach to shed light on other important concepts and constructs in management and organizational research.

Conclusion

In this study, we engaged with the Microhistory of James Meredith’s leadership identification process using ANTi-History approach to unpack the concept of contested leadership and to uncover its underlying latent process of collective hate. Guided by an abductive frame of moral conviction theory and a five-step process of developing collective hate (Reicher et al., 2008), we undertook a process of ‘conceptualizing’ (Maclean et al., 2017: 609) socially contested leadership as a complementary facet in socially constructed leader identification. We rely on an interpretive process of generating insights that surpass the scope and context of the Meredith case.