Deep South Legislatures' Defiance of Brown
“If the [Supreme] Court is permitted … to hold the statute or const of a State unconstitutional because of the opinions of the Judges as to its suitability, the States will have been destroyed, and the indestructible Union of Indestructible States established by the Constitution … will have ceased to exist, and in its stead the Court will have created, without jurisdiction or authority from the people, one central government of total power. … Hereby there is declared the firm intention of this State to take all appropriate measures honorably and constitutionally available to the State, to avoid this illegal encroachment upon the rights of her people.” – Georgia Legislature (1956)
“It is clear that said Court has deliberately resolved to disobey the Constitution of the United States, and to flout and defy the Supreme Law of the Land.” – Florida Legislature (1957)
“The Legislature of Alabama declares the decision and order of the Supreme Court of the United States relating to separation of the races in the public schools are , as a matter of right, null, void, and of no effect … we declare, further, our firm intention to take all appropriate measures honorable and constitutionally available to us, to avoid this illegal encroachment upon our rights.” – Alabama Legislature, 1956 “In late years … the proponents of the acts of encroachment have grown so emboldened that not one of the sister states and its people have escaped the oppressive hand thereof. … [This is] an oppressive course of action [that] seriously threaten[s] to completely destroy our constitutional processes and substitute in lieu thereof ideologies foreign to the soil of our beloved land.” – Mississippi Legislature (1956)
“The question of usurped power asserted in this resolution is not within the province of the usurper to determine.” – Louisiana Legislature (1956)
Deep South Courts’ Mixed Reaction to Brown: Board of Public Instruction of Manatee County v. State – Florida, 1954 (75 So.2d 832)
“The Negro race made more progress under segregation in a shorter time than any other race in history. … Nothing could possibly produce a feeling of inferiority in the Negro child more than to require of him that he go to a school largely attended by white children where he would have practically no opportunity to associate with children of his own race.” – Justice John E. Mathews (dissenting), in Manatee County
Sit-ins: A legal cat-and-mouse game
State v. Goldfinch – Louisiana, 1961 (132 So.2d 860), reversed, 373 U.S. 267 (1963); City of Greenville v. Peterson – South Carolina, 1961 (122 S.E.2d 826) and City of Columbia v. Barr – South Carolina, 1961 (123 S.E.2d 520), both reversed, 373 U.S. 244 (1963); Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham – Alabama, 1961), reversed, 373 U.S. 262 (1963)
“The fact that the State provides a system of courts so that S.H. Kress and Company can enforce its legal rights against trespassers upon its private property in violation of [trespass statutes] … cannot fairly be said to be State action enforcing racial segregation … To rule as contended by defendants would mean that S.H. Kress and Company could enforce its rights against white trespassers alone, but not against Negro trespassers and white and Negro trespassers in company. … it would be a denial to the White race of the equal protection of the law.” – Justice Joseph R. Moss, in Barr
“When a state agency passes a law compelling persons to discriminate … and the State’s criminal processes are employed in a way which enforces the discrimination mandated by that law, such a palpable violation of the 14th Amdt cannot be saved by attempting to separate the mental urges of the discriminators.” - U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, in Peterson | ![]() Protest of admission of James Meredith as first black student at University of Mississippi (1962) - courtesy World-Telegram Archives and Library of Congress “[The Supreme Court] has planted the seed for the destruction of constitutional government … The issues raised by this decision are of such grave import as to require this sovereign State to judge for itself of the infraction of the Constitution.” - South Carolina Legislature (1956)
“The moral attitude of the white population in the affected states will have infinitely more to do with correcting the alleged vices of segregation than any court decision. … [I]t is utter folly to contend that desegregation or any other new and untried philosophy will take root and grow before a sympathetic feeling for it is established.” – Justice William G. Terrell, in Manatee County
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth being arrested in Birmingham, Alabama (1961) - courtesy New York World-Telegram Archives and Library of Congress
Sit-in protester being arrested, Atlanta, Georgia (1964) - courtesy New York World-Telegram Archives and Library of Congress |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 6. DEEP SOUTH LEGAL HISTORY > 6.6 Deep South (1920-1965): Depression, War and Cracks in Jim Crow > 6.6.1 Deep South (1920-1965): The Slow Death of Jim Crow - Southern Blacks and Criminal Law > 6.6.2 Deep South (1920-1965): The Slow Death of Jim Crow - The "Equal Means Equal" Campaign >