The Greenville News from Greenville, South Carolina • Page 15

greenviheonhne.com 7A iner views The Southern Manifesto needs to be remembered Wkdnesday, March 15, 2006 ThkGkkenvilleNkws The language in the manifesto maintains the myth that laws we don't like don't matter. Guest column Pi Sean Pat-r i O'Rourke teaches courses in protest and American public discourse at Furman University. He can be reached at sean.o-rourkefurman.edu. Ron Manuto writes on civil rights and legal issues from his home in California. privilege, hatred and violence.

The distance between reality and the piety of lawfulness claimed in the document is vast. The Southern Manifesto should be remembered primarily because it is not ancient history. The language of "states rights" and "local control" continues to veil the desire to circumvent the plain language of the Constitution to require school prayer, discriminate against gays, "redis-trict" the races, disenfranchise the poor or suppress uncomfortable speech. And the theme of "activist judges" continues to perpetuate the myth that the laws we don't like are no more than the personal opinions of judges we don't want. We often speak today about a "New South." But 15 senators refused to co-sponsor the Senate's recent apology for failing to pass antilynching legislation, and many are against next year's needed renewal of the Voting Rights Act.

Perhaps the new South is not yet different enough from the old. Isn't it time to free ourselves from this ugly legacy? for examples of what citizens should do with a law not to their liking. Instead, they received the Southern Manifesto. Widely circulated in its day, it is filled with angry and pious claims about freedom and the law now all too familiar: The court had violated states rights. It was packed with "activist" judges who had exercised "naked judicial power and substituted their personal political and social ideas for the established law of the land." The authors wrote that Brown caused confusion and chaos.

Almost comically, they said it was destroying "the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races." They even resurrected that old costume of racism, the hallowed Southern "way of life." They knew better. The Manifesto was signed by some of the most important and influential leaders in Congress. Sen. Strom Thurmond drafted the statement, and Sens. Richard Russell, John Stennis, Sam Ervin, Harry Byrd, Russell Long, James Eastland, John Sparkman, George Smathers and J.W.

Fulbright signed. Congressmen Wilbur Mills, Carl Vinson and Hale Boggs were also signatories. These men held key congressional positions. Many had cynically defeated antilynching legislation. They filibustered against the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s.

They fought Thurgood Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court. And they did so knowingly. Their knowledge made the Manifesto horrifying. Those who signed it came from states where the Southern "way of life" was enforced by terrorism (over 4,700 lynched between 1882 and 1968), school inequity was knowingly imposed by law and neglect, voting rights were routinely denied to persons of color, and housing, dining and transportation facilities remained ruthlessly segregated. Using the law to meet one's own ambitions or political ideology is an old story.

But the Manifesto reveals something far more insidious: using the law to mask the seductive language of principle and patriotism. What prompted it? And what can we learn from it? When, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its Brown ruling, the nation was stunned. The "separate but equal" doctrine had allowed us to build an apartheid society, one that had been in place since well before the doctrine legalized it in 1896. But in their dramatic 9-0 decision, the justices forcefully rededicated us to the equal protection principles of the 14th Amendment, stating that "separate" is "inherently unequal." America's wall of apartheid had begun to crack. It was one of our finest moments.

But it didn't last. Racial hatred ran like poison through the nation's heart, and segregation served the economic and political interests of those in power. The South reacted most fiercely to the court's decision. The By Sean Patrick O'Rourke and Ron Manuto Fifty years ago, 96 Southern congressman entered a "Declaration of Constitutional Principles" into the Congressional Record. All signatories (19 senators and 77 representatives) were from the South.

And all were reacting to the Supreme Court's landmark ruling, Brown vs. Board of Education. What objection could anyone have to a decision guaranteeing all citizens, regardless of race, equal protection of the laws? What fault could conservative leaders find in a ruling reinstating the original intent of the 14th Amendment? The "Southern Manifesto," as it came to be called, was an act of defiance by an oligarchy that had for too long blocked federal attempts to ensure basic rights to African Americans. It was a disgraceful sham, a statement of racism and raw power cloaked in KKK gained new purpose and, less than two months after the ruling, local leaders organized the first White Citizens Council in Mississippi. Chapters sprang up across the South.

Their intent was to use all available means including violence to resist implementing the law. Many looked to the South's national leaders for moral guidance, MORE LETTERS textbooks hence the dire need for critical analysis. Beyond this, the actions of germs and antibiotics can be tested in the present. Exactly how does one test whether or not a frog slowly turned into a prince over the course of millions of years? Evolution is not scientific. Evolution is a fairy tale.

For more on this, please see www.scienceprovesit.com. Trent Bates Central ically analyzed. The letter writer compared criticizing evolution to criticizing germ theory. That's an interesting comparison for a couple of reasons. First, germ theory's principle contributor was Louis Pasteur who was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and who strongly rejected evolution.

Second, refuting the theory of spontaneous generation was a key step in the development of germ theory. Why waste time trying to find ways to battle micro-organisms when they could arise naturally from nonliving substances? Pasteur believed and demonstrated that life comes only from life. Yet naturalisticevolutionary thinking still asks us to believe that God-less biogenesis is possible. The biology text books used by our public school students actually cite "natural-life" experiments in an attempt to make students believe that spontaneous generation can happen. The aspects of these experiments that don't support spontaneous generation are ignored by our The naysayers should regroup and decide it's uncool to ruin someone else's fame.

In four years, let's also hope that they have been diligent in completing their studies in "self-therapy." Del Cring Greenville Evolution's premises need critical review One recent letter writer criticized Mike Fair and the EOC's proposal that evolution be crit- only the best three. Now we pay tribute to the badgers who haunt the woodwork; the nosy Games paparazzi. They seek to critique each athlete after the contest. During the contest, you can be sure that the athlete is the first one aware of mistakes. A faultfinder's motive for questioning an athlete's sincerity is void.

The athlete may have spent a lifetime honing body and mind in hopes of becoming a medallist. It is not a worthwhile trait to debase an athlete for failing to medal; since the athlete already feels the agony of defeat. The closing ceremonies give "attaboys" to every athlete. In another four years, a new group of proud and handsome faces await us. Criticizing Olympians belittles their efforts Young hopefuls unite every four years to test their prowess at the Olympic Games.

Every day for four years, the athlete will run the physical and mental gauntlets of preparation; hoping records attained are favorable enough for Olympic selection. Opening ceremonies present an opportunity for athletes to demonstrate how thrilled they are to participate in such a spectacle. Let the games begin. Every energy source possessed by the athlete will perform. The athlete gives it all; to the finish.

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