Southern Manifesto

Audience

The Southern Manifesto was a unique document in twentieth-century American politics. In many ways it hearkened back to the legislative petitions or memorials of the nineteenth century. Such documents often expressed a particular constituency's strongly felt sentiments but carried no formal legal weight. Although it was primarily a statement of purpose by white southerners engaged in massive resistance, a manifesto that criticized a landmark Supreme Court decision signed by eighty-two representatives and nineteen senators could not be easily dismissed, which, of course, was what the manifesto's framers intended.

As a statement read from the Senate floor and entered into the Congressional Record, the Southern Manifesto was aimed at all Americans but also appealed to some groups in particular. On a basic level the manifesto lent emotional support to southern white school board members, local governmental officials, and others actively opposing the desegregation of public schools. By adding the prestige of national political figures, the manifesto gave massive resistance a veneer of social legitimacy, at least in the southern political climate. It also invoked a common southern argument used since the antebellum period, namely, that the South was a distinct region that could settle its unique racial problems only without outside pressure.

The manifesto, more broadly, went through several rewrites specifically designed to appeal to nonsoutherners and moderates. By invoking history to place the segregationist cause on the same moral side as the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions or as the political thought of James Madison, the manifesto's authors sought to appeal to conservatives and opponents of big government in all sections of the country. Furthermore, the manifesto sought to remind northern Democrats that the white South was united in its defiance of integration and would split the party if necessary to achieve this goal. By the same token, the Southern Manifesto's authors sent a strong message to the administration of Dwight Eisenhower (and presumably to all those who aspired to the White House in the future) that the Solid South would not back a presidential candidate that supported desegregation. The Southern Manifesto also reminded the U.S. Supreme Court to tread lightly on the issue of civil rights, as it needed the voluntary support of lower federal courts staffed by southern judges, as well as state and local government officials, to carry out its decisions.