26 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Byrd, Harry, Sr.(1887–
1966): US senator from
Virginia who urged mas-
sive resistance to Brown.
Massive Resistance: The
white South’s refusal to
comply with Brown’s de-
segregation mandate.
States’ Rights: The con-
stitutional claim that
states are entitled to
operate without the fed-
eral government’s inter-
ference in education and
voting.
Southern Manifesto: A
defiant statement against
the Brown desegrega-
tion decision signed by
almost all southerners in
Congress.
Johnson, Lyndon(1908–
73): US President who
waged a war on poverty
and secured the epic civil
rights acts of 1964 and
1965.
disseminated speech, circuit court judge Tom Brady of Mississippi compared
blacks with chimpanzees who would never learn that a ‘cockroach is not a
delicacy,’ much less how to become competent citizens. To protect ‘blue-
eyed, golden-haired little girls,’ Brady called for a separate territory for
blacks, the election of Supreme Court justices, and the abolition of public
schools. Alluding to the Civil War, Brady reminded northern whites that ‘We
have, through our forefathers, died before for our sacred principles. We can,
if necessary, die again.’
Denouncing Brownas judge-made law, US senator Harry Byrd, Sr., and
newspaper editor James J. Kilpatrick of Virginia called for ‘massive resist-
ance,’ which resurrected the antebellum doctrines of states’ rightsand
interposition against federal interference. Such anger was encapsulated in
the ‘Declaration of Constitutional Principles’ that was proposed and drafted
by senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Sam Ervin of North
Carolina. This Southern Manifesto, which 101 southern members of
Congress signed in March 1956, condemned the Browndecision and pledged
to reverse it [Doc. 3, p. 141]. In the Senate, only three southerners with
presidential ambitions – Lyndon Johnsonof Texas and Estes Kefauver and
Albert Gore, Sr., of Tennessee – did not join this declaration of war against
the Court.
To keep blacks out of all-white public schools, southern state legislatures
declared Brown‘null and void.’ Across the South, hundreds of laws and
resolutions cut off state aid to desegregated schools, revoked the licenses
of teachers in mixed classrooms, repealed compulsory attendance laws,
empowered governors to close the schools, and provided tuition grants to
white children who attended all-white private schools. New ‘school choice’
programs maintained segregation legally because blacks who applied to
white schools were invariably dismissed from their jobs or evicted from their
homes. The most effective device to resist desegregation was the pupil place-
ment law. Ostensibly race-neutral, white school boards determined that
black children’s behavior and academic background were best suited to black
schools. In the most extreme case of massive resistance, Prince Edward
county, Virginia, shut down its schools for four years to prevent what
governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., described as the ‘livid stench of sadism,
sex, immorality, and juvenile pregnancy infesting the mixed schools of the
District of Columbia.’
Many politicians went after the NAACP, which initiated the Brownsuit. If
the NAACP could be destroyed, the argument ran, white supremacy could be
maintained. Following Virginia’s lead, several state legislatures required the
NAACP to relinquish its membership lists or face large fines. State agencies
spied on the NAACP, falsely imprisoned ‘race-mixers,’ fixed juries, manipulated
the media, and bribed ‘Uncle Toms’ to sell out black activists. The never-Uncle Tom: A derogatory
description of a black
person who tries to sat-
isfy whites.