Looking Backward: The Southern Manifesto of 1956

36 Historically Speaking May/June 2006 Reagan may have been the pure product of American popular culture, which in his time was imbued with the Jeffersonian ideas of Western movies and fiction. Glen Jeansonne is professor of20th-century American history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is author or editor ofWomen ofthe Far Right: The Mothers' Movement and World War II (University ofChicago Press, 1996), Transformation and Reaction: America, 1921-1945 (HarperCollins, 1994), and seven other books. David Luhrssen has lectured at Marquette University, Beloit College, and the University of WisconsinMilwaukee and is coauthor with Jeansonne o/ATime ofParadox: America since 1 890 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). 1 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (Simon & Schuster, 1990), 337. 2 Kiron K. Skinner, et al., eds., Reagan: A Life in Letters (Free Press, 2003), 7-8, citing a letter by Reagan to Helen P. Miller, September 3, 1981. 3 Reagan with Richard G Hubler, Where 's the Rest ofMe? The Ronald Reagan Story (Best Books, 1965), 252. 4 Scott and Barbara Siegel, The Encyclopedia of Hollywood (Facts on File, 1990), 456. 5 Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian (Boston, 1948), 3-5. 6 Thomas Jefferson, The Writings ofThomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York, 1893), 3: 268. 7 Jon Tuska, The Filming ofthe West (Doubleday, 1976), 14. 8 Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., In Pursuit ofReason: The Life ofThomas Jefferson (Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 276. 9 Jefferson, Writings, 1: 430. 10Jefferson, Writings, 1: 447. 11Quoted in Frank Donovan, The Thomas Jefferson Papers (Dodd, Mead, 1963), 46-47. 12Skinner, ed., Reagan: A Life in Letters, 13, citing a letter by Reagan to Leonard Kirk, March 23, 1983. 13Hedda Hopper, "Mr. Reagan Airs His Views," Chicago Tribune, May 18, 1947. 14Donovan, Jefferson Papers, 66-67. 15Reagan, Speaking My Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1989), 36, reprinting the text ofa speech delivered October 27, 1964. 16Geoffrey O'Brien, The Phantom Empire (Perseus, 1993), 134. 17Jean M. Yarbrough, American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character ofa Free People (University Press ofKansas, 1998), 40, 48-49. Looking Backward: The Southern Manifesto of 1956 Timothy S. Huebner • n March 12, 1956, ninety-six white southern members of Congress— nineteen senators and seventy-seven members of the House of Representatives— affixed their names to the "Southern Declaration of Constitutional Principles," better known as the "Southern Manifesto." The declaration, presented in Congress and published in newspapers across the country, constituted in essence the white South's official response to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which almost two years earlier declared segregated public schools unconstitutional . The Manifesto made clear the South's intention to defy the Court and assert its authority over education and race relations. All signers were Democrats who hailed from the eleven states ofthe Old Confederacy. Only three senators—Lyndon Johnson ofTexas and Albert Gore, Sr. and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee—and twenty-two representatives from the South never signed. If the Brown The Southern Manifesto harkened back topre-Civil Warproslavery ideology. decision was a bold statement by a unanimous Supreme Court, the Southern Manifesto represented an equally firm response, signed by nearly 80% ofthe Southerners in Congress. At first glance the Manifesto seems primarily a constitutional text, as the main arguments it put forth fit with the history of opposition to judicial power, as well as the states' rights constitutional tradition. But before dismissing the Manifesto as a legal brief, we should examine more closely its non-constitutional claims. The drafters and signers of the Southern Manifesto presented a series of arguments in defense of segregation that harkened back to pre-Civil War proslavery ideology. By doing so, they showed how little the values oftheir own section had changed over the past century. During this 50th anniversary year of the Manifesto, historians should consider the wide-ranging themes of this · important document and its lessons about the uniqueness of the white South's historical experience. The Southern Manifesto arose out of a political environment thick with tension over civil rights. During the late winter and early May/June 2006 · Historically Speaking 37 spring of 1956 at least three major civil rights conflicts were playing out in the South. The boycott of...