Florence Sillers Ogden

Florence Carson Sillers Ogden (October 2, 1891 – June 23, 1971) was an American newspaper columnist, socialite, conservative political activist, and segregationist. She wrote the column Dis 'n' Dat for the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville and The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, where she commented on political, social, and economic issues in the United States. A member of a prominent Mississippi family, Ogden was an active member of multiple women's organizations including the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and was a founding member of Women for Constitutional Government. She used her social influence to organize conservative political movements in Mississippi, promote women's involvement in politics, and defend white supremacy. Ogden was an avid supporter of the White Citizens' Councils, criticized liberal shifts in the National Council of Churches, opposed immigration reform, and publicly denounced the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. A Dixiecrat, she pushed for conservative agendas within the Democratic Party and contributed to the Republican Party's shift to political and cultural dominance in the Deep South.

Early life and family Ogden was born on October 2, 1891, to Walter Sillers, Sr. and his second wife, Florence Warfield Sillers. She was the sister of Walter Sillers Jr., a white nationalist and politician who served as the Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives. A member of an aristocratic Mississippi Delta family, her paternal grandparents were planters and slaveholders operating cotton plantations in Rosedale. Ogden's father helped engineer the disfranchisement of African Americans in Mississippi in the 1890s and her mother was a prominent socialite who authored a book on the history of Bolivar County that glorified the Antebellum South and the Confederate States of America. She reported on agricultural issues, economic policies, society events, political happenings, and criticized liberal politicians. Like her mother, Ogden was a leader in her local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, where she networked with other society women and led a movement to celebrate and preserve Mississippi's Confederate history. She also became an active member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

In 1948 Ogden spoke at a Dixiecrat gathering of eight hundred women, urging women to become more active in American politics. Ogden served as a keynote speaker at the organization's inaugural meeting in Jackson, which was attended by almost two thousand women. She openly opposed liberalizing immigration policy, and was part of a grassroots movement to defend the existing government approach to immigration, based on the Immigration Act of 1924, which favored Western European immigrants over immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. She believed that the existing system protected the American way of life. They had no children. She died on June 23, 1971, in Beulah, Mississippi.