Southern Manifesto

The Declaration of Constitutional Principles (known informally as the Southern Manifesto) was a document written in February and March 1956, in the 84th United States Congress, in opposition to racial integration of public places.[1] The manifesto was signed by 101 congressmen (99 Southern Democrats and two Republicans) from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.[1] The document was drafted to counter the landmark Supreme Court 1954 ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which determined that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. School segregation laws were some of the most enduring and best-known of the Jim Crow laws that characterized the Southern United States at the time.[2]

Massive resistance to federal rules that ordered school integration was already being practiced across the South, and was not caused by the Manifesto. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas had worked behind the scenes to tone down the original harsh draft. The final version did not pledge to nullify the 'Brown' decision nor did it support extralegal resistance to desegregation. Instead, it was mostly a states' rights diatribe against the judicial branch for overstepping its role.[3]

The Southern Manifesto accused the Supreme Court of "clear abuse of judicial power" and promised 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."[4] It suggested that the Tenth Amendment should limit the reach of the Supreme Court on such issues.[5] Senators led the opposition, with Strom Thurmond writing the initial draft and Richard Russell the final version.[6] The manifesto was signed by 19 senators and 82 representatives, including the entire Congressional delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. All of the signatories were Southern Democrats from former Confederate states except two Virginia Republicans, Joel Broyhill and Richard Poff.

Three former Confederate state Senators, all of the former border state Senators, and both Senators from Oklahoma – which was not a state during the Civil War – refused to sign:

• Allen Frear and John J. Williams of Delaware,
• former Senate Democratic Caucus Leader Alben Barkley and Senate Majority Whip Earle Clements of Kentucky
• James Glenn Beall and John Marshall Butler of Maryland,
• Stuart Symington and Thomas Hennings of Missouri,
• Robert Kerr and Mike Monroney of Oklahoma,
• Al Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee,
• William Laird and Matthew Neely of West Virginia,
• and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas.

In the House of Representative, these Congresspersons refused to sign:

• Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn of Texas,
• 16 of the 21 Democrats in the Texas House delegation, including future Speaker Jim Wright,
• all 5 Democrats in the Oklahoma delegation, including House Majority Whip Carl Albert,
• 3 of the 7 Democrats in the Tennessee delegation,
• 3 of the 11 Democrats in the North Carolina delegation,
• Dante Fascell of Florida
• all of the 26 border state House Democrats in Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Their opposition earned them the enmity of their colleagues for a time.