The Citizens' Councils (also known as White Citizen's Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash against the US Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The first was formed on July 11, 1954 in Indianola, Mississippi. The name was changed to the Citizens' Councils of America in 1956, when the organization's influence grew beyond Mississippi. With about 60,000 members across the Southern United States, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of public schools: the logical conclusion of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

The Councils also worked to oppose voter registration efforts in the South (where most African Americans had been disenfranchised since the late 19th century) and integration of public facilities in general during the 1950s and 1960s. Members employed tactics such as economic boycotts, unjustified termination of employment, propaganda, and outright violence. By the 1970s the influence of the Councils had waned considerably due to the passage of federal civil rights legislation. The councils' mailing lists and some of their board members found their way to the St. Louis–based Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1985.

In May 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. At the time, schools and other public facilities were segregated by state laws in Southern states. The Citizens' Councils were founded in Indianola, Mississippi two months after the Brown v. Board ruling. The recognized leader was Robert B. Patterson, a plantation manager and a former captain of the Mississippi State University football team. Additional chapters were established in many other southern towns in following years.^{[citation needed]}

At this time, most Southern states enforced the racial segregation of all public facilities; in places where local laws did not require segregation, Jim Crow harassment enforced it. From 1890 to 1908, most Southern states passed new constitutions or laws which disfranchised most blacks by imposing barriers to voter registration and voting. Despite the fact that civil rights organizations won some legal challenges, such as the prohibition on white primaries, most blacks were still disfranchised in the South in the 1950s. They risked retaliation by challenging the segregation of seating on buses as well as the segregation of seating at lunch counters, including segregation in department stores. The risks did not end immediately after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Patterson and his followers formed the White Citizens Council in response to increased civil rights activism, activism which it responded to with economic retaliation and violence. The Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a grassroots civil rights organization founded in 1951 by T. R. M. Howard of the all-black town Mound Bayou, Mississippi, was based 40 miles from Indianola. Aaron Henry, a later official in the RCNL and the future head of the Mississippi NAACP had met Patterson during their childhood.

Within a few months, the White Citizens Council had attracted members whose racist views were similar to the views of its leaders; new chapters developed beyond Mississippi in the rest of the Deep South. The Council often had the support of the leading white citizens of many communities, including business, law enforcement, civic and sometimes religious leaders, many of whom were members. Member businesses, such as newspaper publishing, legal representation, medical service, were known for collectively acting against registered voters whose names were first published in local papers before additional retaliatory actions were taken against them.

Council members published a book which was titled Black Monday. The book detailed their belief that African Americans were inferior to white people which served as the basis for their belief that the races must remain separate. "If in one mighty voice we do not protest this travesty on justice, we might as well surrender," one of the authors, Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Tom P. Brady, wrote.

In August 1956, their official newspaper reported councils in "at least 30 states" in places such as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Newark.