Polish Ham and the Southern Strategy

Rapid growth of right-wing radio in the early 1960s sparked a wave of grassroots activism. One such example is the Polish ham boycott of 1962, in which a Miami chiropractor’s protest was amplified by the Radio Right until it became a nationwide movement dominated by suburban housewife protestors. Their boycott “card parties” convinced the biggest retailers in the country to stop selling goods imported from Communist countries in Eastern Europe, giving a black eye to the John F. Kennedy administration, which had organized the trade deal. The stories of some of the individual women involved epitomize the power of housewife populism in post–World War II consumer culture and show the mobilizing power of radio. In addition, while the Radio Right had an audience among suburbanites across the nation, it grew most rapidly in the Deep South, playing an important role in convincing white segregationists to switch parties from Democrat to Republican.