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SOUTHERNERS WHO REFUSED TO SIGN THE SOUTHERN MANIFESTO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1999

TONY BADGER
TONY BADGER
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Abstract

The aim of those drafting the Southern Manifesto of 1956 was to coerce wavering Southern politicians into supporting a united regional campaign of defiance of the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling. The Manifesto largely succeeded. Most Southern congressmen, including leading moderates, felt they had no alternative but to succumb to what they perceived to be mass popular segregationist sentiment and sign the Manifesto. This paper examines the cases of those who refused to sign: what were the sources of their racial moderation, did they face electoral retribution, or did their careers suggest there was a political alternative to massive resistance? The evidence from Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and North Carolina highlights the diversity of political opinion among the non-signers – from New Deal liberal to right-wing Republican ideologue – and the disparate sources for their racial moderation – national political ambitions, party loyalty, experience in the Second World War, Cold War fears, religious belief, and an urban political base. Their fate suggests, at the very least, that outside the Deep South there was room for political manoeuvre, especially if state political leaders took a united moderate stance. Nevertheless, the cautious and gradualist stance of the moderates did not offer a convincing alternative to the massive resistance strategy so passionately advocated by the conservatives.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 1999 , pp. 517 - 534
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This article was originally delivered as a paper at the meeting of the Organization of American Historians in San Francisco in April 1997. The author is grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies, the British Academy, the North Caroliniana Fund, and the Research Committee of Newcastle University for supporting this research. The author has benefited greatly from the comments of Pete Daniel, Lewis Gould, Elizabeth Jacoway, Ben Johnson, and Patricia Sullivan on earlier versions of the paper.