What Is The Southern Manifesto


Sen. Strom Thurmond prepared first draft of Southern Manifesto repudiating the Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation determination. Feb 1956. Courtesy: Strom Thurmond Establish

In a campaign known as "Massive Resistance," Southern white legislators and school boards enacted laws and policies to evade or defy the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown ruling. In 1956, nearly every congressman in the Deep S, 101 in total, signed the "Southern Manifesto." It said the Brown decision represented "a clear abuse of judicial power." Otherwise law-abiding Southerners, who once justified Jim Crow by citing the Court'due south Plessy determination, at present disregarded the Court'due south dominance. Opponents of the Brown decision argued that the federal government had no ability to strength states to integrate schools.

The "Southern Manifesto" is every bit follows:

DECLARATION OF Ramble PRINCIPLES

The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases is at present bearing the fruit ever produced when men substitute naked power for established law.

The Founding Fathers gave us a Constitution of checks and balances considering they realized the inescapable lesson of history that no man or group of men can be safely entrusted with unlimited ability. They framed this Constitution with its provisions for change by subpoena in order to secure the fundamentals of government confronting the dangers of temporary pop passion or the personal predilections of public officeholders.

We regard the decisions of the Supreme Courtroom in the school cases as a articulate abuse of judicial ability. It climaxes a trend in the Federal Judiciary undertaking to legislate, in derogation of the authority of Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights of u.s. and the people.

The original Constitution does not mention teaching. Neither does the 14th Amendment nor whatever other amendment. The debates preceding the submission of the 14th Subpoena clearly testify that there was no intent that it should bear on the system of education maintained past usa.

The very Congress which proposed the amendment after provided for segregated schools in the Commune of Columbia.

When the amendment was adopted in 1868, in that location were 37 States of the Union. . . .

Every one of the 26 States that had any substantial racial differences among its people, either canonical the functioning of segregated schools already in existence or subsequently established such schools by activity of the same police-making body which considered the 14th Subpoena.

As admitted by the Supreme Court in the public school case (Brown five. Board of Education), the doctrine of separate only equal schools "manifestly originated in Roberts v. City of Boston (1849), upholding school segregation against assault as existence violative of a Land ramble guarantee of equality." This ramble doctrine began in the N, non in the Southward, and it was followed non only in Massachusetts, but in Connecticut, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other northern states until they, exercising their rights as states through the constitutional processes of local self-government, changed their schoolhouse systems.

In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 the Supreme Courtroom expressly alleged that under the 14th Amendment no person was denied whatever of his rights if the States provided carve up but equal facilities. This determination has been followed in many other cases. It is notable that the Supreme Court, speaking through Primary Justice Taft, a former President of the U.s.a., unanimously declared in 1927 in Lum five. Rice that the "separate but equal" principle is "within the discretion of the State in regulating its public schools and does not conflict with the 14th Subpoena."

This interpretation, restated time and again, became a part of the life of the people of many of the States and confirmed their habits, traditions, and manner of life. It is founded on elemental humanity and commonsense, for parents should not exist deprived by Government of the correct to direct the lives and instruction of their own children.

Though there has been no constitutional subpoena or act of Congress changing this established legal principle almost a century old, the Supreme Courtroom of the United States, with no legal basis for such action, undertook to exercise their naked judicial power and substituted their personal political and social ideas for the established law of the land.

This unwarranted exercise of power past the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating anarchy and confusion in united states of america principally afflicted. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient endeavour by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.

Without regard to the consent of the governed, exterior mediators are threatening immediate and revolutionary changes in our public schools systems. If done, this is certain to destroy the system of public education in some of united states.

With the gravest concern for the explosive and dangerous condition created by this decision and inflamed by outside meddlers:

We reaffirm our reliance on the Constitution as the key law of the land.

We decry the Supreme Court'southward encroachment on the rights reserved to us and to the people, contrary to established law, and to the Constitution.

We commend the motives of those States which have alleged the intention to resist forced integration by whatsoever lawful means.

We entreatment to usa and people who are not directly affected by these decisions to consider the constitutional principles involved against the time when they besides, on problems vital to them may be the victims of judicial encroachment.

Fifty-fifty though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, nosotros have full faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and volition in time demand that the reserved rights of the states and of the people be fabricated secure against judicial usurpation.

We pledge ourselves to utilize all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this conclusion which is opposite to the Constitution and to prevent the use of forcefulness in its implementation.

In this trying period, as we all seek to right this incorrect, we appeal to our people not to exist provoked past the agitators and troublemakers invading our States and to scrupulously refrain from disorder and lawless acts.

Signed by:

MEMBERS OF THE U.s.a. SENATE

Walter F. George, Richard B. Russell, John Stennis, Sam J. Elvin, Jr., Strom Thurmond, Harry F. Byrd, A. Willis Robertson, John L. McClellan, Allen J. Ellender, Russell B. Long, Lister Hill, James O. Eastland, W. Kerr Scott, John Sparkman, Olin D. Johnston, Price Daniel, J.W. Fulbright, George A. Smathers, Spessard L. Holland.

MEMBERS OF THE United states of america HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Alabama: Frank Due west. Boykin, George Grand. Grant, George W. Andrews, Kenneth A. Roberts, Albert Rains, Armistead I. Selden, Jr., Carl Elliott, Robert E. Jones, George Huddleston, Jr.

Arkansas: E.C. Gathings, Wilbur D. Mills, James West. Trimble, Oren Harris, Brooks Hays, Due west.F. Norrell.

Florida: Charles Eastward. Bennett, Robert Fifty.F. Sikes, A.S. Herlong, Jr., Paul G. Rogers, James A. Haley, D.R. Matthews.

Georgia: Prince H. Preston, John Fifty. Pilcher, E.L. Forrester, John James Flynt, Jr., James C. Davis, Carl Vinson, Henderson Lanham, Iris F. Blitch, Phil K. Landrum, Paul Brown.

Louisiana: F. Edward Hebert, Hale Boggs, Edwin East. Willis, Overton Brooks, Otto Due east. Passman, James H. Morrison, T. Ashton Thompson, George S. Long.

Mississippi: Thomas Yard. Abernathy, Jamie L. Whitten, Frank E. Smith, John Bell Williams, Arthur Winstead, William M. Colmer.

Due north Carolina: Herbert C. Bonner, L.H. Fountain, Graham A. Barden, Carl T. Durham, F. Ertel Carlyle, Hugh Q. Alexander, Woodrow W. Jones, George A. Shuford.

South Carolina: L. Mendel Rivers, John J. Riley, Westward.J. Bryan Dorn, Robert T. Ashmore, James P. Richards, John L. McMillan.

Tennessee: James B. Frazier, Jr., Tom Murray, Jere Cooper, Clifford Davis.