By William Haupt III | The Center Square contributor
– William Hazlitt
Recently when angry Democrats
attacked U.S. Sen. Tim Scott for claiming that America was not a racist nation,
little did they know they did that on the 65th anniversary of “The Southern
Manifesto?”
In 1954, when the Supreme Court
ruled on Brown v. Board of Education and outlawed segregation in schools,
Southern Democrats began a massive campaign to defy this! President
Eisenhower’s Republican Congress responded by passing the 1957 Civil Rights Act
to enforce the Court’s decision.
The day Republicans filed the
Civil Rights Act, Southern Democrats wrote a rebuttal named “The Southern
Manifesto.” This was a show of unity against Eisenhower and the Republicans
attempts to enforce desegregation. This credo accused the Supreme Court of
“abuse of power" and to use "all means” to reverse Brown v.
Education. This solidified the Democrats stand against Brown v. Education and
their defiance to future desegregation. One hundred Southern Democrats signed
it.
Howard Smith of Virginia,
chairman of the House Rules Committee, was the key segregationist in the lower
chamber to lobby Democrats to support The Southern Manifesto. Under Smith, the
Rules Committee became the graveyard for every civil rights initiative in the
1950s. Smith declared, “The state ship has ‘drifted from her moorings,’ and the
high court’s record on civil rights demonstrates it will continue to deviate
from the core fundamental separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution.”
House Republicans passed
Eisenhower’s Civil Rights bill 286-126 and Senate Republicans 72-18. But Lyndon
Johnson was ordered to destroy it by Senate Democrats. He and Georgia’s Richard
Russell and Mississippi’s James Eastland “gutted the bill.” But the Republicans
salvaged one key element: “they ended segregation in public schools and federal
troops had authority to enforce it.”
The 1964 Civil Rights Act, a
carbon copy of the 1957 bill, passed with 60% of the Democrats and 78% of the
Republicans voting yes. But Democrats in the Senate, led by and William
Fulbright and Robert Byrd, claimed it violated the Southern Manifesto and
destroyed the South’s “social order and racial impurity.” They filibustered it
for 83 days before Republicans finally got the bill to the floor.
Despite a huge Democratic
majority, Republicans outvoted Democrats by 20% in passing The 1965 Voting
Rights Act. Democrats, led by Robert Byrd, filibustered it. He told Congress
he’d take every possible measure to protect The Southern Manifesto. Although
LBJ was under pressure from Civil Rights leaders to pass this bill, he failed
to gain support from many key Democrats.
“A president is like a jackass
stuck in the rain. All you can do is let s*** hit your a** and take it.”
– Lyndon Johnson
When Robert Byrd introduced The
Southern Manifesto in the Senate, he said, “The Constitution nor does the 14th
Amendment or any other amendment mention anything about schools. The debates
preceding the 14th Amendment clearly showed that education would be maintained
by the states.”
Democrats used the Southern
Manifesto to garner resistance to the Brown decision in their local districts.
They mobilized en masse to nullify the Supreme Court’s decision. In the states
across the South, Democrats used public funds to set up private white-only
schools. Prince Edward County, Virginia, closed their entire public school
system for five years rather than desegregate.
“If there was ever a Senator
who was the embodiment of his state, it was Robert C. Byrd.”
– Joe Biden
In 1995, Bill Clinton praised
his political mentor William Fulbright for making our country and our world
better. “In the work he did, the words he spoke, and the life he lived, he
stood tall against the 20th century’s most destructive forces and fought to
advance America’s brightest hopes.”
Bill Clinton’s mentor was one
of the authors of the Southern Manifesto. He was also a leader in the
Democratic filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights
Act of 1965. Although Fulbright finally renounced his racist past, he said he
had no regrets for anything he did in politics.
“You know Republicans make an
effort to disenfranchise people of color like you.”
– Hillary Clinton
In the 1960s, when it was clear
the Supreme Court would not reverse Brown, Southern Manifesto signatories
shifted strategies by embracing their own mutated version of it. They contended
that Brown mandated “colorblind” policies. Therefore, Brown forbade districts
from voluntarily striving for meaningful integration if they considered the
race of individual students in pursuing that goal?
When he was running for
president in 2000, Al Gore told the NAACP that his father, Al Gore Sr., lost
his Senate seat because he voted for the Civil Rights Act. The inconvenient
truth is, Gore Sr. voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 24th
Amendment that abolished the charging of poll taxes. He lost his 1970 race due
to his positions on prayer in schools and on the Vietnam War.
Al Gore’s reframing of the
pertinent history of the Democratic Party in microcosm is just a repeat
performance of what Democrats have sedulously been doing with their party’s
history for decades. You can rewrite history but you can’t erase it.
“A zebra does not change its
spots.” (Al Gore)
Democrats have hidden Biden’s
role in fighting student busing since the left resurrected him for office. When
his past work with segregationists, many whom signed The Southern Manifesto,
made headlines, Biden’s spokesman, Bill Russo defended him. “He never thought
busing was the best way to integrate schools in Delaware. He felt that busing
would not achieve equal opportunity.”
Yet, according to civil rights
lawyer Jack Greenberg, Biden fought for the segregationists and sided with them
on issues affecting school systems that separated students by race. Biden
sponsored an amendment to an appropriations bill that barred the federal
government from withholding funding from schools that didn’t desegregate.
“You’ve got to deal with what’s
in front of you.”
– Joe Biden
Author Toba Beta wrote
“Hypocrisy insults intelligence.” On the 65th anniversary of the Southern
Manifesto, Democrats celebrated by “attacking Senator Tim Scott (R) with racist
epithets” after he said that America was not a racist country. Democrats forget
that they didn't elect a black senator until 1994. Yet Mississippi elected
their first black senator, Hiram Revels, a Republican, in 1870.
The New South is
socioeconomicly color-blind. Democrats and Republicans did not switch sides on
race. The more Republican the South became, the less racist it became. The eras
of Democratic segregation and racism are over. The left must accept its past
and quit trying to reinvent history. It's time Democrats quit using race to
foment hatred against the GOP when racism is a factual part of their ugly
historic past.
“Hypocrisy is the ultimate
power move. It is a way of demonstrating that one plays by a different set of
rules from the ones adhered to by other people.”
Michael Shellenberger
EDITOR’S NOTE:
For Additional information about civil rights history, see the article on this blog:
Republicans and Democrats Did Not Switch Sides On Racism
