The African American Freedom Struggle faced widespread organized opposition throughout the South. While the Ku Klux Klan represented reformers’ most obvious and longstanding foe, the elite White Citizens’ Council emerged in July of 1954 to fight the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools are unconstitutional. The Citizens’ Council presented itself as an effective and more socially acceptable opponent of racial justice in the South by primarily using economic violence rather than bloodshed and burning crosses to discourage integration. Drawing on the mythology of the Old South, these groups appealed to their white supporters through the use of music and imagery which evoked a simpler past, free of the vexing questions of racial inequality and civil rights for African Americans and promoting a sense of pride in Southern heritage. At the same time, the determined and often violent efforts of groups like the Ku Klux Klan to block the progress of the civil rights movement provoked artists and musicians, providing vivid material for songs such as "The Story of Old Monroe."