New from the University Press of Mississippi:
The Southern Manifesto: Massive Resistance and the Fight to Preserve Segregation, by
John Kyle Day (University of Arkansas at Monticello). Here's a description from the Press:
On March 13, 1956, ninety-nine members of the
United States Congress promulgated the Declaration of Constitutional
Principles, popularly known as the Southern Manifesto. Reprinted here,
the Southern Manifesto formally stated opposition to the landmark United
State Supreme Court decision
Brown v. Board of Education, and the emergent civil rights movement. This statement allowed the white South to prevent
Brown's
immediate fullscale implementation and, for nearly two decades, set the
slothful timetable and glacial pace of public school desegregation. The
Southern Manifesto also provided the Southern Congressional Delegation
with the means to stymie federal voting rights legislation, so that the
dismantling of Jim Crow could be managed largely on white southern
terms.
In the wake of the
Brown decision that declared
public school segregation unconstitutional, seminal events in the early
stages of the civil rights movement--like the Emmett Till lynching, the
Montgomery bus boycott, and the Autherine Lucy riots at the University
of Alabama brought the struggle for black freedom to national attention.
Orchestrated by United States Senator Richard Brevard Russell Jr. of
Georgia, the southern congressional delegation in general, and the
United States Senate's Southern Caucus in particular, fought vigorously
and successfully to counter the initial successes of civil rights
workers and maintain Jim Crow. The South's defense of white supremacy
culminated with this most notorious statement of opposition to
desegregation.
The Southern Manifesto: Massive Resistance and the Fight to Preserve Segregation
narrates this single worst episode of racial demagoguery in modern
American political history and considers the statement's impact upon
both the struggle for black freedom and the larger racial dynamics of
postwar America.
