The Southern Manifesto + statues

The Southern Manifesto of 1956 was created in response to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Here is a quote from the manifesto:

quote:

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This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.

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All of the 19 Senators who signed the Manifesto were Democrats: Walter F. George, Richard B. Russell, John Stennis, Sam J. Ervin, Jr., Strom Thurmond, Harry F. Byrd, A. Willis Robertson, John L. McClellan, Allen J. Ellender, Russell B. Long, Lister Hill, James O. Eastland, W. Kerr Scott, John Sparkman, Olin D. Johnston, Price Daniel, J.W. Fulbright, George A. Smathers, and Spessard L. Holland.

Several of the Senatorial signatories are memorialized as statues.



(1) West Virginia Senator (D) (and former Ku Klux Klansman) Robert C. Byrd, stands tall in the West Virginia Capital Building, pointing the way toward segregation.

(2) Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long (D) (son of former Louisiana Governor Huey Long) stands studiously near the Russell B. Long Memorial Fountain, located in the Centennial Plaza, on the Law Center campus, at the Louisiana State University.

(3) South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond (D) (drafter of the original version of the Manifesto) is frozen in stride before the South Carolina State Capital.

(4) Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright (D) (awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President William Jefferson Clinton) stands at-ease behind the Old Main Building, at the University of Arkansas.

(5) North Carolina Sam Ervin (D) (Chair of the Senate Watergate Committee) also received the bronze treatment.


In the age of statue-gate, it will be interesting to see how Democrats respond to these prominently-placed sculptures.