Southern Manifesto

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The Southern Manifesto, in the first three paragraphs of its “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” denounces the “unwarranted” decision in Brown v. Board of Education as a “clear abuse of judicial power.” According to the manifesto, the Supreme Court ignored important constitutional precedents in the Brown decision. The manifesto states (in paragraph 11) that rather than following a traditional, strict-constructionist view of the Constitution, which had dominated school-segregation law for five decades, the Supreme Court justices “substituted their personal, political, and social ideas for the established law of the land.” The manifesto declares that in doing so the justices overstepped their bounds and invaded the realm of states' rights.

The manifesto's signers challenge the Brown decision's most controversial finding: that segregated education deprives African Americans of their Fourteenth Amendment equal protection rights. The manifesto rejects this idea outright. It declares (in paragraph 4) that the Fourteenth Amendment's framers never intended to “affect the system of education maintained by the States.” Indeed, the manifesto presents evidence to the contrary. It argues (in paragraphs 4–7) that the Fourteenth Amendment does not mention education. Indeed, the Congress that proposed it “subsequently provided for segregated schools in the District of Columbia,” and twenty-six of the thirty-seven states that considered ratification of the amendment either possessed or developed segregated systems of public education. The manifesto's authors consider these points conclusive evidence that the Fourteenth Amendment does not provide legal justification for school desegregation.

The manifesto also claims (in paragraphs 8 and 9) that the Brown decision rejects a series of well-known legal precedents, including Roberts v. City of Boston (1849), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and Gong Lum v. Rice (1927). These cases each recognized the constitutionality of state-enforced segregation. Gong Lum v. Rice was perhaps the most powerful precedent in the group. In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court had declared that public school segregation was “within the discretion of the States … and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment.” The manifesto's authors argue in the following paragraphs that this decision and others like it confirm the “habits, traditions, and way of life” in the South. Now, however, without any “constitutional amendment or act of Congress,” the Supreme Court was “changing this established legal principle,” which had existed for almost a century. Southerners would not abide by the Court's decision. On the contrary, they would use “all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision.”

The Southern Manifesto's constitutional argument sidesteps the base appeals to racism and violence that so many segregationists relied upon. In fact, the manifesto's authors blame (in paragraph 12) the Supreme Court for “destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races” in the South. This self-serving, fallacious interpretation of the Jim Crow era would become a standard political ploy in the segregationist argument against the Brown decision. Segregationists argued that it was the Supreme Court, not the white South, that treated African Americans unfairly. For in its Brown decision, the Court had “planted hatred and suspicion” where previously there had been “friendship and understanding.”

Despite the manifesto's defiant tone, the document concludes with a hint of moderation. The document's signers “appeal to the States and people … to consider the constitutional principles involved” in the school desegregation debate. No program of interposition or nullification is proposed. On the contrary, the manifesto's signers pledge to use “lawful means” to seek a reversal of the Brown decision. In addition, they request the people of the South to “scrupulously refrain from disorder and lawless acts.”

Additional Commentary by Bradley Skelcher, Delaware State University

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal' has no place.” The Court asserted that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and ordered the end of segregation in the public schools. The Brown decision in many ways rejuvenated Thurmond's run for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina. He pointed to his opposition of the decision and gained support from the state's branches of the White Citizens' Council, an organization formed throughout the South in opposition to Brown. The council was inspired by the earlier Dixiecrat movement, opposed to the encroachment of the federal government on the domain of the states in enforcing legislation passed to achieve civil rights. Claiming state sovereignty, the White Citizens' Council clamored for political action to stop integration. Nonetheless, in 1955, the Court stated that integration must occur “with all deliberate speed.” Soon after his arrival in Washington, D.C., Senator Thurmond took up the mantle of states' rights, as he challenged the Court's ruling on the integration of public education and immediately began drafting a response to the Brown decision. Walter F. George, from Georgia, introduced this Declaration of Constitutional Principles, also called the Southern Manifesto, to the U.S. Senate on March 12, 1956. Although other southern senators contributed to the document, the essence of the states' rights manifesto remained Thurmond's.

The Southern Manifesto declares opposition to what nineteen senators and seventy-seven members of the House of Representatives believed to have been “the unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases.” The essence of their argument revolved around the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Thurmond and other members of Congress argued that the U.S. Constitution did not mention education, and neither did the Fourteenth Amendment, upon which the Brown argument is said, incorrectly, to have relied. Through the Southern Manifesto, Thurmond and his southern allies declare,

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.

The congressmen add that because of this “unwarranted exercise of power by the Court,” irreparable damage is being done to race relations between whites and blacks in the South. The Court, they argue, “has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.” They go on to assert, “Without regard to the consent of the governed, outside mediators are threatening immediate and revolutionary changes in our public schools systems.” The Southern Manifesto then warns, “If done, this is certain to destroy the system of public education in some of the States.” To preserve the rule of law and the Constitution, Thurmond and the document's other signatories declare that they would “resist forced integration by any lawful means.” They understood that they were a minority in Congress, but they remained confident that they represented the “majority of the American people” who would oppose the “judicial usurpation” of the “reserved rights of the States and of the people.”

Thurmond and the others who endorsed the Southern Manifesto led a decade-long challenge to the integration of public education in the country. The southern strategy of massive state-level resistance came in the form of delays through court challenges and violent intimidation in its more extreme forms. Thus, the Southern Manifesto accurately outlined the challenges that would delay the implementation of the Brown decision, emphasizing deliberation and persistence.