Influence of the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson Decision on Southern Editorial Arguments during the “Massive Resistance” to Integration: Perspective from Alabama

We examine the role of the press in Alabama during the “massive resistance” to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling of 1954 on school integration, and the extent to which newspaper editorials relied on social and legal rationales for segregation based on the High Court’s earlier Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. All three of Plessy’s rationales for institutionalizing segregation—states’ rights, a dual system of “social rights” based on race, and the doctrine of “separate but equal”—were widely adopted by the press. This contrasted with the approach of “natural law” preservationists who relied on “pure racial ideology” in fighting integration. A content analysis of Birmingham News editorials from 1960 to 1964 found support for our thesis that “mainstream” segregationist newspapers were more likely to use “pragmatic” rationales based on “constitutional” arguments rather than “natural law” arguments to defend segregation. This approach was seen as more effective in persuading the public outside the South on the merits of the “southern way of life.” Thus, Birmingham News editors consistently supported “political equality” of races to the dismay of staunch segregationist leaders in Alabama such as Governors John Patterson and George Wallace.