Conclusion: The Long Stride Toward Freedom1

The conclusion assesses the long term implications of the Southern Manifesto for both the course of the Civil Rights Movement as well as the larger racial dynamic s of Postwar America. Under the circumspect rhetoric of moderation, the Southern Manifesto undermined the efforts of civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to desegregate the South, and empowered southern officials to ignore the Brown decision for years. This conclusion thus places the Southern Manifesto in proper historical perspective and provides a summary of the implications of this event, the greatest episode of antagonistic racial demagoguery in modern American History.

The Promulgation

Chapter Six narrates the Southern Congressional Delegation’s promulgation of the Declaration of Constitutional Principles, popularly known as the Southern Manifesto. Led by Sen. Walter George of Georgia and U.S. Rep. Howard Smith of Virginia, the Southern Manifesto produced a widespread national reaction the permeated every aspect of the American political discourse. From both national political parties, the media, and civil rights leaders themselves, this chapter assesses the national response, and its consequences for the legal fight for civil rights in the Hall of Congress, the President’s enforcement of Brown, and the struggle for eual citizenship for all Americans.

The Signatories

Chapter Five provides a narrative of the Senate’s Southern Caucus’ struggle to secure the endorsement of the Southern Manifesto by the majority of the Southern Congressional Delegation. These included an important endorsement by prominent national Democrats like U.S Reps. Brooks Hays, but refusals by U.S Rep. Harold Cooley of North Carolina, Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn of Texas, as well as U.S. Sens. Albert Gore, Sr., Estes Kefauver, of Tennessee and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas. The ramification of these endorsements, for both Massive Resistance and the larger Struggle for Black Freedom, is also examined.

The Upheaval: Interposition and Moderation

This chapter narrates the dramatic socioeconomic changes occurring in the former states of the Confederacy after World War II. The changes culminated with the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, as well as the early events in the American Civil Rights Movement, including the Emmitt Till Lynching and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The chapter then analyses the response of white southerners to these transformative events. The white South’s response channelled into two recognized programs. Southern leaders either outright refused to implement Brown, which became known as Interposition or, called for a gradual or piecemeal implementation, which became known as moderation.

The Declaration of Constitutional Principles

This chapter treats the Southern Manifesto as a document in and of itself. It employs a narrative analysis to show how and why the authors struggled to produce a document that satisfied all of the members of the Southern Congressional Delegation, but also their constituents. The final draft of the statement also satisfied the national Democratic Party, and the most of the American polity.

The Racial Politics of the 1956 Elections

This chapter discusses how the emerging Civil Rights Movement and the controversy over Brown’s implementation played out in American partisan politics. Specifically, the United States Senate’s Southern Caucus, under the leadership of Senator Richard Brevard Russell, Jr., led a concerted regional program to subvert Brown. In turn, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s response to the controversy over Brown and the Autherine Lucy riots proved to be the driving force of American politics in the 1956 national elections, determining Ike’s own decision to seek reëlection/. The Civil Rights Movement also set the course for the Democratic Presidential Primaries in that election year, almost becoming definitive issue in American politics.

Who Wrote the Southern Manifesto?

Historians neither agree upon who conceived of the the Southern Manifesto nor who actually wrote it. Most of the members of the U.S. Senate’s Southern Caucus claimed to have played a part in its drafting, while some alleged that they conceived of the project in the first place. This chapter unravels the mystery over who actually wrote the Southern Manifesto, analysing the existing scholarship and presumptions toward the document. This chapter uses all of the relevant historical evidence to reveal who in the Southern Caucus are the actual authors. The evidence reveals that though the committee of Sens. Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia, John Stennis of Mississippi, and Sam Ervin of North Carolina were the principle authors, every member of the Southern Caucus who signed the document made significant contributions, including J. William Fulbright, Spessard Holland, J. Strom Thurmond, and Price Daniel.

Introduction: The Manifesto That Made Massive Resistance

The introduction explains the historical parameters of this research project, placing it into the larger context of the profound socioeconomic changes of Postwar America. The South had long sought to oppose the Federal Government’s efforts to desegregate southern society, which began with the Dixiecrat Revolt of 1948 in opposition to The Truman Administration’s report “To Secure These Rights.” In contrast, the Southern Congressional Delegation in general and the Senate’s Southern Caucus in particular worked within and through the Democratic Party to oppose the destruction of Jim Crow segregation, most notably Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Their efforts culminated in the promulgation of the most notorious public document in postwar American History, the Southern Manifesto.