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On March 12, 1956, the House Rules Committee chairman, Howard Smith, announced the Southern Manifesto in a speech on the House Floor. The document’s formal name was the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles, ” Seventy-seven representatives signed it, and 19 Senators, totaling approximately one-fifth of the membership of Congress, and all from Confederate states. Brought forth as an act of defiance, the Manifesto challenged the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which outlawed separate school facilities for black and white students.
The Southern Manifesto attacked the ruling as an abuse of judicial power that treaded upon states’ rights. It also compelled southerners to expend all “lawful means” to protest the “chaos and confusion” that would come with school desegregation. Howard Smith worked with several Senators to create the Manifesto. The Manifesto received no verbal challenges or dissent. Southern legislators feared that the desegregation of schools would only be the beginning and feared that the mandate to desegregate other public spaces would soon follow. The Southern Manifesto laid out a plan to maintain Jim Crow segregation.
Years would pass as court proceedings sought to eliminate the legal challenges raised by southern states determined to maintain segregation. In 1958, the Supreme Court again reviewed the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in Cooper V. Aaron. The Cooper V. Aaron case challenged The Little Rock Nine’s attempt to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Cooper V. Aaron ruling asserted that Arkansas could not pass legislation undermining the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. It affirmed that its interpretation was the “supreme law of the land.” Even with both court rulings, Southern opposition to integration continued.
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