Southern Manifesto and Response

              The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school 
cases is now bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power 
for established law.
   The Founding Fathers gave us a Constitution of checks and balances 
because they realized the inescapable lesson of history that no man or group of 
men can be safely entrusted with unlimited power. They framed this	
Constitution with its provisions for change by amendment in order to secure the 
fundamentals of government against the dangers of temporary popular passion or 
the personal predilections of public office holders.
   We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the school 
cases is now bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power
for established law.
   The Founding Fathers gave us a constitution of checks and balances
because they realized the inescapable lesson of history that no man or group of
men can be safely entrusted with unlimited power.  They framed this
Constitution with its provisions for change by amendment in order to secure the
fundamentals of government against the dangers of temporary popular passion or
the personal predilections of public office holders.
   We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a 
clear abuse of judicial power. It climaxes a trend in the Federal Judiciary 
undertaking to legislate, in derogation of the authority of Congress, and to 
encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people.
   The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does the 
Fourteenth Amendment nor any other Amendment. The debates preceding the s
ubmission of the Fourteenth Amendment clearly show that there was no intent 
that it should affect the systems of education maintained by the States.
   The very Congress which proposed the Amendment subsequently 
provided for segregated schools in the District of Columbia.
   When the Amendment was adopted in 1868, there were 37 States of the 
Union. Every one of the 26 States that had any substantial racial differences 
among its people either approved the operation of segregated schools already in 
existence or subsequently established such schools by action of the same 
lawmaking body which considered the Fourteenth Amendment.
   As admitted by the Supreme Court in the public school case (Brown v.
Board of Education), the doctrine of separate but equal schools "apparently-
originated in Roberts v. City of Boston . . . (1849), upholding school
segregation against attack as being violative of a State constitutional guarantee
of equality. " This constitutional doctrine began in the North--not in the South,