Source: https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/sources_document2.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 05:58:42+00:00

Document:
From Congressional Record, 84th Congress Second Session. Vol. 102, part 4. Washington, D.C.: Governmental Printing Office, 1956. 4459-4460.
In 1956, 19 Senators and 77 members of the House of Representatives signed the "Southern Manifesto," a resolution condemning the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The resolution called the decision "a clear abuse of judicial power" and encouraged states to resist implementing its mandates. In response to Southern opposition, in 1958 the Court revisited the Brown decision in Cooper v. Aaron, asserting that the states were bound by the ruling and affirming that its interpretation of the Constitution was the "supreme law of the land."
The original Constitutional does not mention education. Neither does the Fourteenth Amendment nor any other amendment. The debates preceding the submission of the Fourteenth Amendment clearly show that there was no intent that it should affect the systems of education maintained by the states.
As admitted by the Supreme Court in the public school case (Brown v. Board of Education), the doctrine of separate but equal schools "apparently originated in Roberts v. City of Boston (1849), upholding school segregation against attack as being violative of a state constitutional guarantee of equality." This constitutional doctrine began in the North-not in the South-and it was followed not only in Massachusetts but in Connecticut, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other northern states until they, exercising their rights as states through the constitutional processes of local self-government, changed their school systems.
In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 the Supreme Court expressly declared that under the Fourteenth Amendment no person was denied any of his rights if the states provided separate but equal public facilities. This decision has been followed in many other cases. It is notable that the Supreme Court, speaking through Chief Justice Taft, a former President of the United States, unanimously declared in 1927 in Lum v. Rice that the "separate but equal" principle is "* * * within the discretion of the state in regulating its public schools and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment."
We decry the Supreme Court's encroachments on rights reserved to the states and to the people, contrary to established law and to the Constitution.
Alabama-John Sparkman and Lister Hill.
Arkansas-J. W. Fulbright and John L. McClellan.
Florida-George A. Smathers and Spessard L. Holland.
Georgia-Walter F. George and Richard B. Russell.
Louisiana-Allen J. Ellender and Russell B. Lono.
Mississippi-John Stennis and James O. Eastland.
North Carolina-Sam J. Ervin Jr. and W. Kerr Scott.
South Carolina-Strom Thurmon and Olin D. Johnston.
Virginia-Harry F. Bird and A. Willis Robertson.
Alabama-Frank J. Boykin, George M. Grant, George M. Andrews, Kenneth R. Roberts, Albert Rains, Armistead I. Selden Jr., Carl Elliott, Robert E. Jones and George Huddleston Jr.
Arkansas-E. C. Gathings, Wilbur D. Mills, James W. Trimble, Oren Harris, Brooks Hays, F. W. Norrell.
Florida-Charles E. Bennett Robert L. Sikes, A. S. Her Jr., Paul G. Rogers, James A. Haley, D. R. Matthews.
Georgia-Prince H. Preston, John L. Pilcher, E. L. Forrester, John James Flint Jr., James C. Davis, Carl Vinson, Henderson Lanham, Iris F. Blitch, Phil M. Landrum, Paul Brown.
Louisiana-F. Edward Hebert, Hale Boggs, Edwin E. Willis, Overton Brooks, Otto E. Passman, James H. Morrison, T. Ashton Thompson, George S. Long.
Mississippi-Thomas G. Abernethy, Jamie L. Whitten, Frank E. Smith, John Bell Williams, Arthur Winsted, William M. Colmer.
North Carolina-Herbert C. Bonner, L. H. Fountain, Graham A. Barden, Carl T. Durham, F. Ertel Carlyle, Hugh Q. Alexander, Woodrow W. Jones, George A. Shuford.
South Carolina-L. Mendel Rivers, John J. Riley, W. J. Bryan Dorn, Robert T. Ashmore, James P. Richards, John L. McMillan.
Tennessee-James B. Frazier Jr., Tom Murray, Jere Cooper, Clifford Davis.
Texas-Wright Patman, John Dowdy, Walter Rogers, O. C. Fisher.
Virginia-Edward J. Robeson Jr., Porter Hardy Jr., J. Vaughan Gary, Watkins M. Abbitt, William M. Tuck, Richard H. Poff, Burr P. Harrison, Howard W. Smith, W. Pat Jennings, Joel T. Brothill.

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