Congress, Politics, Society, Supreme Court

Massive Resistance and the Government Shutdown

 By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger 

“We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation. 

-The Southern Manifesto,  Cong. Rec., 84th Cong. 2d Session, Vol. 102, part 4 (March 12, 1956)

‘This was an activist court that you saw today.  Anytime the Supreme Court renders something constitutional that is clearly unconstitutional, that undermines the credibility of the Supreme Court.  I do believe the court’s credibility was undermined severely today.” 

-Michele Bachmann (R. Minn.),  June 26 2012

Most people are familiar with the opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al., 349 U.S. 483 (1954), in which a unanimous Supreme Court summarily outlawed public school segregation by tersely declaring, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” 349 U.S. at 495.  But many people do not know that Brown involved a consolidation of cases from four states.  The “et al.” in the style refers to decisions on similar facts in Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia.  And the response of Virginia to the ruling in Brown provides an interesting comparison with the actions leading to the current government shutdown.

In 1951 the population of Prince Edward County, Virginia was approximately 15,000, more than half of whom were African-American.  The county maintained two high schools to accommodate 386 black students and 346 white students.  Robert R. Moton High School lacked adequate science facilities and offered a more restricted curriculum than the high school reserved for white students.  It had no gym, showers or dressing rooms, no cafeteria and no restrooms for teachers.  Students at Moton High were even required to ride in older school buses.

Suit was filed in federal district court challenging the Virginia constitutional and statutory provisions mandating segregated public schools.  Although the trial court agreed that the school board had failed to provide a substantially equal education for African-American students, it declined to invalidate the Virginia laws, concluding that segregation was not based “upon prejudice, on caprice, nor upon any other measureless foundation,” but reflected “ways of life in Virginia” which “has for generations been a part of the mores of the people.”  Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 103 F. Supp. 337, 339 (E.D. Va. 1952).  Instead, the court ordered the school board to proceed with the completion of existing plans to upgrade the curriculum, physical plant and buses at Moton High School.  When the plaintiffs took an appeal from the decision, the Democratic machine that had for many years controlled Virginia politics under the firm hand of Sen. Harry Byrd had little reason to believe that “ways of life” that had prevailed since the end of the Reconstruction era would soon be declared illegal.

When the Brown decision was announced, the reaction in Virginia was shock, disbelief and anger. Reflecting the prevailing attitudes, the Richmond News Leader railed against “the encroachment of the Federal government, through judicial legislation, upon the reserved powers of the States.”  The Virginia legislature adopted a resolution of “interposition” asserting its right to “interpose” between unconstitutional federal mandates and local authorities under principles of state sovereignty.  And Sen. Byrd organized a campaign of opposition that came to be known as “Massive Resistance.”

In August of 1954 a commission was appointed to formulate a plan to preserve segregated schools.  Late in 1955, it presented its recommendations, including eliminating mandatory school attendance, empowering local school boards to assign students to schools and creating special tuition grants to enable white students to attend private schools.  Enabling legislation was quickly adopted and “segregation academies” began forming around the state.  Subsequent legislation went even further by prohibiting state funding of schools that chose to integrate.

In March of 1956, 19 senators and 77 house members from 11 southern states signed what is popularly known as “The Southern Manifesto,” in which they declared, “Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, we have full faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and will in time demand that the reserved rights of the States and of the people be made secure against judicial usurpation.”

Throughout this period the Prince Edward County schools remained segregated, but when various court rulings invalidated Virginia’s various attempts to avoid integration, the school board took its final stand.  It refused to authorize funds to operate any schools in the district, and all public schools in the county were simply closed, and remained closed from 1959 to 1964.

There are striking similarities between Sen. Byrd’s failed plan of Massive Resistance and Republican efforts to prevent implementation of the Affordable Care Act.  There was widespread confidence among conservatives that the Supreme Court would declare the Act unconstitutional.  When that did not occur, legislators such as Michele Bachmann, quoted above, attempted to deny the legitimacy of the Court’s ruling.  Brent Bozell went further, denouncing Chief Justice Roberts as “a traitor to his own philosophy,” hearkening back to the days when southern roadsides were replete with billboards demanding the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.

The House of Representatives has taken over 40 votes to repeal the ACA, quixotic efforts pursued for reasons known only to John Boehner and his colleagues.  And in accordance with the Virginia legislative model, the House has attempted to starve the ACA by eliminating it from funding bills.  Following the failure of these efforts, Republicans have elected to pursue the path ultimately taken by the school board of Prince Edward County and have shut down the government.

Even the strategy followed by Republicans is largely a southern effort.  Approximately 60% of the Tea Party Caucus is from the South.  Nineteen of the 32 Republican members of the House who have been instrumental in orchestrating the shutdown are from southern states. It is hardly surprising therefore, that the current impasse is characterized by the time-honored southern belief in nullification theory as a proper antidote to disfavored decisions by a congressional majority.

In reflecting upon the experience of Virginia many years later, former Gov. Linwood Holton noted, “Massive resistance … served mostly to exacerbate emotions arrayed in a lost cause.”  Republicans would do well to ponder the wisdom in that observation.

1,677 thoughts on “Massive Resistance and the Government Shutdown”

  2. Marc, the real point of the “shutdown” is not OBAMACARE its the fact that the GOP found a way to have their way even though they lost the White House.

    As to whether the almost wild eyed opposition to everything OBAMA is a reman at of the Civil War, live in the south for a while and you will know that the opposition is definitely coming from folks who truly believe that the Confederate states should have won because they were right and slavery wasn’t all that bad. Their opposition to everything Democratic including unions and labor laws crowned by the Civil Rights Act is long lived and stronger now than it was in the 80s.

  3. This observation is interesting, accusatory but not much more informative than a rehash of the Kennedy/Lincoln coincidences. Obamacare is not the moral equivalent of the equal protection clause. It is merely a law and one which is by the way opposed by more Americans than those who say they support it.

    And why is the observation that Southern states representatives dislike federal government mandates characterized as the remnants of old school Democratic Party racism? We are still a Union of sovereign states and the suggestion that every person in every corner of America should think alike is not only inconsistent with the concept of liberty but also reflects a similar kind of arrogance and superiority the author claims Senator Harry Byrd and his followers exhibited.

    I agree that over zealous tea party politicians are hurting the GOP but I think assigning Confederate style racism to them is a bit too much.

    1. “We are still a Union of sovereign states and the suggestion that every person in every corner of America should think alike is not only inconsistent with the concept of liberty but also reflects a similar kind of arrogance and superiority the author claims Senator Harry Byrd and his followers exhibited.”

      Marc,

      So when soldiers are said to die for our country, the truth is that they are dying for a union of autonomous States. What Mike Appleton has pointed out is that in truth the Civil War never ended, it just became a guerrilla action, by those who would undo the battlefield losses coupled with over generous surrender terms. Jeff Davis and R.E. Lee should have been hung for the traitors they were, instead their memory is still cherished today. It is little coincidence that the most economically unstable States are also the most educationally challenged and the worst States to work in. The Southern aristocracy neither died, nor faded away. They are alive and waiting to turn most of us into serfs and substitute wage slavery for the real thing. Under wage slavery the advantage is that you don’t have to feed, clothe and house your slaves.

  4. “Following the failure of these efforts, Republicans have elected to pursue the path ultimately taken by the school board of Prince Edward County and have shut down the government.” – Mike A (emphasis added)

    Actually very little of anything was shut down, if we use the general definition of American government, which includes the individual state governments.

    The unfortunate misuse of the word and the concept, even if it applies exclusively to the federal government, gives the wild eyed fanatics the inaccurate grandiose belief that they shut down the entire American government.

    Their oft repeated fantasy is that the government can be “drowned in a bathtub” (What is a “Government” and What is a “Shutdown”?).

  5. Can someone dig my comment out of the spam filter- WP won’t let me just re-post it.

  6. Michael Murry, spot on observation. I ran across this page of maps earlier tonight and it may be a good illustration of part of your thesis; the progression is interesting but the last one illustrates the hostility and prohibition of organizing public sector workers. I also recall that the first runaway companies I became aware of ran away to Southern states that were right-to-work states. Running off-shore came later.

    My father once told me that the employees at one of his early jobs (making lasts in a shoe factory -St. Louis was big in shoe manufacturing) threatened to organize and the company just shut down and moved down south. The south has never given up slavery, they just reinvented it into wage slavery. Don’t get me started on my mother’s experience in a Georgia textile mill and how trying to unionize it worked out, or didn’t. 🙂

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/21/947774/-Some-Maps-to-consider#

  7. Excellent article Mike A. There are two countries within our borders, the Union and the Neo-Confederacy. Debates over the ACA, unions and public sector unions, the social safety net and the appropriate role of government keeps bringing that into sharper focus every day. The overt racism of the Republican party is fundamental to the equation IMO. The full flower of the Southern strategy has bifurcated this country and who’s who is apparent in elected officials and public attitudes. I’m totally ready to re-draw the map. Leave the south and the frontier cowboys to their own devices. Want a quick check of who’s who and what’s what? Check out the Medicaid expansion map, it’s not absolutely precise but it’s close:

    “According to The Times, “The 26 states that have rejected the Medicaid expansion are home to about half of the country’s population, but about 68 percent of poor, uninsured blacks and single mothers. About 60 percent of the country’s uninsured working poor are in those states. Among those excluded are about 435,000 cashiers, 341,000 cooks and 253,000 nurses’ aides.” ”

    http://bethechange2012.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/health-care-refugees/

    I also bet that if you asked any of the Teabagger Caucus to discuss the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and why that’s a good thing none of them could do it. I’d just love to hear Ted Cruz take questions about whether or not default would further accelerate the distrust in the world that having the dollar as the reserve currency is wise.

    Times article which motivated the above linked blawg posting (and worth the time to read) but no map is included:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/health/millions-of-poor-are-left-uncovered-by-health-law.html?hp&_r=1&

  8. Relevant to this so-called “southern strategy,” self-described southerner and conservative Michael Lind has a good article at Salon.com entitled The South is Holding America Hostage. Some excerpts:

    “[A common] mistake is the failure to recognize that the Southern elite strategy, though bound up with white supremacy throughout history, is primarily about cheap and powerless labor, not about race. … So the struggle is not one to convert Southern Baptists to Darwinism or to get racists to celebrate diversity. The on-going power struggle between the local elites of the former Confederacy and their allies in other regions and the rest of the United States is not primarily about personal attitudes. It is about power and wealth.” [emphasis added].

    “For some time, the initiative has rested with the Southern power elite, which knows what it wants and has a plan to get it. The strategy of the conservative South, as a nation-within-a nation and in the global economy, combines an economic strategy and a political strategy” [emphasis added].

    “The economic strategy is to maximize the attractiveness of the former Confederacy to external investors, by allowing Southern states to out-compete other states in the U.S., as well as other countries if possible, in a race to the bottom by means of low wages, stingy government welfare (which if generous increases the bargaining power of poor workers by decreasing their desperation) and low levels of environmental regulation” [emphasis added].

    “The political strategy of the Southern elite is to prevent the Southern victims of these local economic policies from teaming up with allies in other parts of the U.S. to impose federal-level reforms on the Southern states. Voter suppression seeks to prevent voting by lower-income Southerners of all races who are hostile to the Southern power elite. Partisan gerrymandering of the U.S. House of Representatives by conservatives in Southern state legislatures weakens the votes of anti-conservative Southerners, if they are allowed to vote” [emphasis added].

    “If voter suppression and vote dilution strategies fail, the Southern conservatives can still try to ward off unwelcome federally-imposed reforms that might weaken control of the Southern workforce by Southern employers and their political agents, by policies of devolving federal programs to the states, privatizing federal programs like Social Security and Medicare, blocking the implementation of new federal entitlements like Obamacare or a combination of these strategies.”

    The entire article merits reading and filing away for frequent future reference as it zeroes in on the “divide and rule” strategies, both political and economicl, of the Southern Elite Class that essentially seek to impverish workers while turning them against each other on the bais of race, religion, and other culture-war “values” issues that distract the victims, both white and non-white, from focusing on the economic causes of their misery and uniting with each other against their true Southern Elite persecutors.

    Now, will a broad-based and militant labor-left form and stand up for itself? As Percy Shelly wrote long ago:

    Rise like lions after slumber
    In unvanquishable number.
    Shake your chains to earth like dew
    Which in sleep had fallen on you.
    You are many, they are few.

  9. The “massive resistance” plan has been being sold mainly but not exclusively in the South for a very long time; however, the intensity and breath of its implementation has increased since President Obama was first nominated. The idea that a black man would even run for president was anathema to many and the reaction was swift. While there is some evidence that the right wing is losing steam, I would suggest that getting too comfortable with that hope would be folly. Right wing policies are insidiously becoming main stream as they almost “look” moderate in comparison with the radical craziness now on offer by the GOP. The Media actually terms them rational, reasonable or courageous. Sometimes they are being suggested in different dress by people who claim to be Democrats. The damage they have done in many areas of our lives and are ready to do has been and will be long lived. The lives they are damaging will not easily be mended.

    I am not convinced that President Obama will stand firm against the GOP that wishes to “win” by extortion what it could not win at the ballot box. I hope he does.

  10. Kathin,

    Please provide examples of Democrats conducting themselves in a manner as Mike A’s portrayal of Republicans. Please give Democratic Congressional Leaders names and examples of their ‘southern racists’ behavior. Making a statment or assertion without supporting your rhetoric does an injustice to Mike A, and those of us (like me who believe both parties are doing a great injustice to the working poor and middle class by furloughing their paycheck, but allowing Congressional leaders and the president to collect their paychecks) who want to see an educated, opposing/different perspective of this ordeal.

    October 17 is the Debt Ceiling debacle. Can’t wait to see how the stock market (and my 401k) is going to react.

  11. Truly wonderful article. The parallels are certainly there to which it is obvious that those who would be well served by reading it are precisely the folks who repeating history with the same disastrous results.

    I would argue that the underlying race more closely ties these two historical events together more than many care to acknowledge, particularly those on the right side of the aisle who have spent the past five years denying that racism even exists at all (as if it just *poof* it just disappeared).

  12. “Even the strategy followed by Republicans is largely a southern effort.” (Mike A)

    This Southern Strategy is often called the “dog whistle” as it is heard and understood by conservatives and not heard or understood by moderates.

    Thus all the lies denying the strategy exists and directed at moderates were heard and understood by conservatives as lies but were accepted as a necessary part of the strategy.

    Then along came the Presidential election of 2012 … remember Karl Rove’s meltdown? Romney won 9 of the 11 former Confederacy states but only got 12% of the non-white vote. Obama garnered large voter support from all groups except southern white males (but still got 35% of them).

    The dog whistle is still being blown like mad and the lies are still flying fast and furious … guns, abortion, public pensions, ACA, SNAP, shutdown … frantic desperation. But stoking the right-wing base’s fires of resentment isn’t working because the right-wing base is shrinking and nobody else is listening to their lies.

    One can see it all over this blog.

  13. Republicans responsible for the shut down, now that’s a big old fat laugh and a lie, let’s make that clear first and foremost. And being a republican and agreeing with many of the Tea Party ideas I find this post as about as Southern racist as an article can get, geez johnathan who would have thought you would be on the Jesse Jackas- band wagon.

    1. “And being a republican and agreeing with many of the Tea Party ideas I find this post”

      Kathin,

      It would be helpful if you explained why you think this article is racist, since you agree with many of the tea bagger ideas that are themselves racist. Absent, any coherent reasons on your part that this article is racist I would assume that you are a racist who is projecting your own bigotry onto this blog.
      I will be certainly willing to entertain any arguments you might have for your position, but at this point you haven’t done anything but label without even any supporting logic.

  14. Tony,
    Yes, I can’t imagine Obama will allow us to default. But which path will he take? Impeachment or The Cave?

    We need another Shakespeare to write the end of this tale.

  17. I note that I neglected to list my sources. For those who are interested, they are as follows:

    1. Richmond News Leader, editorial, February 2, 1956.
    2. Michael Techsler, “The Spillover of Racialization into Health Care: How President Obama Polarized Public Opinion by Racial Attitudes and Race,” mst.michaelfesler.com/uploads/ajps11full.pdf (2010).
    3. Zack Beauchamp, “How Racism Caused the Shutdown,” Think Progress, October 9, 2013.
    4. Laura Grant, “Virginia’s Massive Folly: Harry Byrd, Prince Edward County, and the Front Line,” Undergraduate Research Journal at UCCS, Vol. 2.1 (Spring, 2009).
    5. Linwood Holton, “A Former Governor’s Reflections on Massive Resistance in Virginia,” 49 Wash.&Lee Law Rev. 15 (1992).
    6. Luke Johnson, “John Roberts Outrages Conservatives In Health Care Ruling,” Huffington Post, June 28, 2012.

  19. Good to know that unlike the movies, final desperate stands are most often futile.

    It will be interesting to see how this game of chicken plays out for the debt limit. If the republicans do not turn aside, I think Obama will solemnly declare default a violation of the Constitution he is sworn to uphold (which it is) and order the treasury to pay our debts, and I think that would hold up in the Supreme Court. Congress doesn’t have the votes to impeach, I doubt that could happen. They will just lose their bargaining chip once and for all.

    Which would be great, but it means they will turn aside, rather than risk that.

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