An outgrowth of the United White Party (founded circa 1957), the National States Rights Party came into its own in 1958 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Its primary leaders were Edward R. Fields and J.B. Stoner, who met in law school. It was there that they first worked together on the white supremacist and anti-Semitic causes that were the cornerstone of the NSRP’s platform. As the party’s constitution ex plained: "We . . . believe in the Christian heritage of our people, the White Race and the Nation which the Whiteman created out of the wilderness of this continent." The NSRP was never a significant political force, despite claiming to be "America’s third largest party." It fielded candidates for president and vice-president in both 1960 and 1964, winning 44,984 votes with Arkansas governor Orval Faubus on the ticket in 1960, but only 6,953 votes with New York’s John Kasper in 1964.
The pictured item is from a flyer advertising the NSRP’s national convention to nominate candidates for the 1964 election. As is apparent here, the NSRP drew heavily on Nazi symbolism, publishing a newsletter called the Thunderbolt in reference to an icon used by several Nazi organizations during World War II. The jagged symbol in the center of the standard used by the NSRP and pictured here is composed of the two s-shaped runes that signified the Nazi Schultzstaffel ("S.S."), although the NSRP arranged them to overlap rather than appear next to each other (as was the case with the original Nazi symbol).