PARTY SPLIT ON SEGREGATION

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27917, 14 March 1956, Page 13

PARTY SPLIT ON SEGREGATION

Democrats In North Warn Colleagues

(N Z Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 9.45 p.m.) WASHINGTON, March 12. Northern Democrats told their Southern colleagues today that they would arouse the “wrath of the world” against the United States with their campaign to upset the Federal Supreme Court’s ban on school segregation of whites and negroes.

The party-splitting fight erupted as Southern Democrats formally laid before Congress their “declaration of constitutional principles” against the Court’s ruling. They also sought new support for the manifesto.

The statement, which was made public yesterday, was presented to the Senate by Senator Walter George (Democrat, Georgia) and to the House of Representatives by Mr Howard Smith (Democrat, Virginia).

The document, signed by 100 House and Senate members, pledges them to use “all lawful action” to upset the Supreme Court’s decision favouring mixed-classrooms. But it also calls on all citizens to refrain from violence to obtain this end.

The White House declined to comment on the manifesto, but it came under fire from members of the Congressional civil rights block, including the Democratic Senators Hubert Humphrey (Minnesota), Wayne Morse (Oregon), Richard Neuberger (Oregon), and Herbert Lehman (New York). Senator Humphrey told the Senate that “if we persist in denying equal rights” to all citizens, “we will bring down on this nation the wrath of the world.” He said there were more coloured than white people in the world and the coloured people were demanding their rights. Senator George said that the Southerners drafted the manifesto because of “the increasing gravity of the situation and the peculiar stress which the Court’s decision laid on the South.” In presenting the declaration to the House, Mr Smith said that the Southerners considered it a “sacked obliga-, tion” to sound the alarm when they saw the Court embarked on a course to “change our form of government without the consent of the governed."