List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xiii
Abbreviations xxv
Chapter I: Patriotic Daughters and Isolationist Mothers
Conservative Women in the Early Twentieth Century 1
Chapter II: All Politics Was Local
Grassroots Conservatism in Postwar Los Angeles 32
Chapter III: Education or Indoctrination?
Conservative Female Activism in the Los Angeles Public Schools 69
Chapter IV: "Siberia, U.S.A."
Psychological Experts and the State 103
Chapter V: The "Conservative Sex"
Women and the Building of a Movement 136
Conclusion 169
Appendix: Conservative Bookstores Operating in Southern California in the 1960s 175
Notes 179
Index 217

Mothers of Conservatism tells the story of 1950s Southern Californian housewives who shaped the grassroots right in the two decades following World War II. Michelle Nickerson describes how red-hunting homemakers mobilized activist networks, institutions, and political consciousness in local education battles, and she introduces a generation of women who developed political styles and practices around their domestic routines. From the conservative movement's origins in the early fifties through the presidential election of 1964, Nickerson documents how women shaped conservatism from the bottom up, out of the fabric of their daily lives and into the agenda of the Republican Party.
A unique history of the American conservative movement, Mothers of Conservatism shows how housewives got out of the house and discovered their political capital.

Michelle M. Nickerson is associate professor of history at Loyola University, Chicago. She is coeditor of Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region.