Theodore G. Bilbo was a former governor of Mississippi and three-term United States Senator who became a hero of white supremacists in the 1940s for, among other things, writing the rabidly racist Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization, quoted on the pictured card. The Citizens’ Councils of America frequently used such rhetoric of the supposed impending doom that racial integration would br ing about in order to advance its white segregationist agenda, first forged in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of Education.
Yet although such verbal rhetoric was often matched by equally terrifying visual imagery, that was not the case on this card. Rather, the image of eagle and shield that appeared above the quotation was generically patriotic. Even more telling was the Citizens’ Council logo appearing at the bottom of the card. The twin US and Confederate flags appealed to Southern heritage and national pride, while the "States’ Rights, Racial Integrity" motto portrayed the professedly positive ideals promoted by the Citizens’ Council. In both cases, the imagery appealed to senses of group pride based on a unified vision of the US that had no room for alternatives.