The Supreme Court in 1954 unanimously declared in Brown v. Board of Education that racial discrimination in schools is unconstitutional.
The reaction of Democrats was indignation and defiance. Democrat Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out the state National Guard to prevent Blacks from entering white schools.
Democrat Virginia Senator Harry Byrd organized the “Southern Manifesto” calling for Brown to be reversed and vowing never to implement it. It was signed by 99 Democrats but only two Republicans, including all but two of the Democrat senators from states in the former Confederacy. Democrats in Virginia passed the Stanley Plan, named after Democrat Virginia Governor Thomas Stanley, barring any state school receiving state funds from following the Brown ruling.
Democrat-controlled legislatures across the South closed many schools to avoid having to integrate them. The Democrat legislature of Florida passed a resolution declaring Brown “null and void.” A Democrat member of the Ku Klux Klan murdered a Black civil rights activist for daring to file a lawsuit to enforce Brown in Mississippi.
Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace personally stood in the doorway to block Black enrollment at the University of Alabama.
the Aspen beat 