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1

Read the section of the text under the heading "The Rise of the Civil Rights Movement," paying special attention to the subsection on "The Brown Decision and 'Massive Resistance.'" The documents below include excerpts from the Supreme Court decision in Brown and from a resolution of the all-white South Carolina State Senate defying the decision and its follow-up implementation rulings. Sentiments similar to the South Carolina resolution were expressed in other southern state legislatures and in the "Southern Manifesto" signed by nineteen U.S. senators and eighty-two congressmen. It was in this same mood that the General Assembly in Georgia changed the state flag from one based on the "stars and bars" of the Confederacy to one containing the more familiar Confederate battle flag, which had come to be a widely recognized symbol of white resistance to racial integration. Consider the following questions: Why was it important for the Court to stress that it could not "turn the clock back" in considering the impact of segregation? What is the significance of the Court's distinction between physical equality and true educational equality? Which do you think truly bothered the South Carolina legislator more, the constitutional principles or the issue of race?

The Brown Decision and Massive Resistance






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