While many Americans are taught that the civil rights movement was localized in the South in the 1950s and '60s, the reality is that the struggle was brutal all over the country.

In 1956, U.S. Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia responded to the civil rights movement by rallying against the national desegregation of public schools. He said, “If we can organize the Southern states for massive resistance to this order, I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South.”

In practice, this “massive resistance” often meant harassing Black students, bombing schools, and attacking civil rights activists. But even though Byrd’s call-to-action spoke to many white Southerners, opposition to the civil rights movement was certainly not restricted to the South.

In 1963, polls showed that 78 percent of white Americans would leave their neighborhoods if Black families moved in. Meanwhile, 60 percent of them had an unfavorable view of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.

From New York to California, the anti-civil rights movement was widespread throughout the country. And many white Americans were not afraid to say they supported it.

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