Critics of the ruling included President Eisenhower himself,
who privately regretted his decision to appoint Warren to the bench. After
the Brown decision, Eisenhower refused to support
the ruling actively and therefore offered no public comment about
it at all.
The Southern Manifesto
Southern politicians vehemently opposed the Brown decision.
State legislatures in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia
passed resolutions asserting their right to nullify federal laws
they disliked. More than a hundred southern congressmen and senators
even signed a “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” also known
as the Southern Manifesto, in 1956,
protesting the Brown decision and pressuring their
home states to ignore the ruling or reject it entirely.
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Eisenhower’s lack of support for the civil rights movement
convinced many blacks that they could not rely on the federal government
to right racial wrongs. Rather, many came to believe that change
would have to originate within the black community itself. The first
landmark change came on December 1, 1955,
in Montgomery, Alabama. Black seamstress Rosa Parks,
sitting in the “colored” section of a city bus, refused to give
up her seat to a white man who was looking for a seat because the
“white” section was full. Parks was subsequently arrested for disorderly
conduct.
Parks’s arrest outraged the black community
and prompted its local leaders, including young Baptist preacher Martin
Luther King Jr., to organize the Montgomery
bus boycott, refusing to ride any city buses and crippling
the bus company financially. The boycott continued for more than
a year, ending when the Supreme Court issued a ruling in December 1956 declaring
segregated bus seating unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, King, in taking charge of the boycott, became
a major figurehead in the blossoming civil rights movement.
Even though he himself came from a prosperous family, he detested racial
inequality and sympathized with downtrodden southern blacks. King’s
education, position within the Baptist church, and unmatched oratory
skills made him an inspiring leader as the movement
grew.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference
After the success of the bus boycott, King hoped to rally
more southern churches behind the civil rights cause. In 1957,
King joined with nearly 100 other black ministers in founding the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference(SCLC). Whereas the NAACP attacked
segregation via the law, King intended to use various forms of nonviolent protest to
provoke segregationists and win support from the moderate majority
of southern whites. He drew much of his inspiration from the nonviolent
tactics of Mohandas Gandhi, who had used nonviolence
to protest against British colonial rule in India. The formation
of the SCLC also marked the shift within the civil rights movement
from predominantly northern leadership to southern activism.
Although the SCLC did convince more southern blacks to support the
civil rights movement, the organization failed to spark controversy
or elicit sympathy from whites.
