Alabama's Rebel Yell

Southern members of the U.S. Congress in 1956 issued the Southern Manifesto, calling the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown decision an abuse of judicial power and arguing that forcing public school integration contrary to social custom had replaced friendship and understanding between the races with hatred and suspicion. In 1956, the Alabama Legislature adopted a resolution declaring the Supreme Court's decisions affecting the separation of the races null, void, and of no effect as a matter of right. Alabama lawmaker Albert Boutwell, who became Birmingham's mayor in 1963, wrote the 1956 Pupil Placement Act, an amendment to the Alabama Constitution that gave White parents and school administrators ways to avoid racially mixing students. Southern politicians thus ignored the federal court's 1954 Brown decision and did very little to integrate public schools.

Birmingham, Alabama · United States