People, Locations, Episodes

The ‘Southern Manifesto,’ is Enacted

*On this date in 1956, we recall the enactment of the “Southern Manifesto.” This was a legislative challenge to defeat the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v B.O.E. in 1954.  Case number 102 Cong. Rec. 4515-16 1956 was signed by 19 Senators and 81 Representatives from the South, including all of Georgia's congressional delegation.

It stated: We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power. 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 the States and the people. The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does the 14th amendment nor any other amendment. The debates preceding the submission of the 14th amendment clearly show that there was no intent that it should affect the systems of education maintained by the States.
The very Congress, which proposed the amendment subsequently, provided for segregated schools in the District of Columbia. When the amendment was adopted in 1868, there were 37 States of the Union.

Every one of the 26 States that had any substantial racial differences among its people either approved the operation of segregated schools already in existence or subsequently established such schools by action of the same lawmaking body, which considered the 14th amendment.  Though there has been no constitutional amendment or act of Congress changing this established legal principle almost a century old, the Supreme Court 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 by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.

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 fundamental law of the land. We decry the Supreme Court's encroachments on rights reserved to the States and to the people, contrary to established law and to the Constitution. We commend the motives of those States, which have declared the intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means. We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision, which is contrary to the Constitution, and to prevent the use of force in its implementation.

The White House response to the Southern Manifesto was demonstrated eighteen months later when President Eisenhower used federal troops to integrate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.