Kent Courtney - in Defense of Segregation

In Defense of Segregation

Courtney agreed with former Professor Medford Evans of Northwestern State University (then Northwestern State College) in Natchitoches, Louisiana, who declared that it would be "impossible" to integrate white and black society. Evans further said that integration was one of the two chief communist operations designed to bring about world conflict. Courtney was also active in the White Citizens Councils, organized to fight the desegregation of public schools, once the United States Supreme Court issued Brown v. Board of Education.

Courtney was a strong supporter of staunchly conservative and segregationist Democratic Congressman John Rarick of St. Francisville in West Feliciana Parish. Rarick ran for governor in 1967, but for Courtney to have been able to vote for him he would have had to have been a registered Democrat at the time. In that same Democratic primary, Courtney was supporting another right-wing fixture in Louisiana, Ned O'Neal Touchstone, a Shreveport bookstore owner, who was challenging Education Superintendent William J. "Bill" Dodd.