"The Racist Roots of the Nullification Movement" By Charles Lemos

[YankeeLeft7x]

The Racist Roots of the Nullification Movement

by Charles Lemos , Sat Jul 10, 2010 at 03:55:00 AM EDT
mydd.com

“…In his recently published book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, historian Tom Woods, a senior fellow at the right wing economic think tank Ludwig van Mises Institute located in Alabama, maintains that the states have the power to nullify laws that in their estimation exceed the powers of Congress granted by the Constitution to enact….The reason we "liberals and big government types" raise the specter of racism is because the last time the nullification argument was raised came in response to the 1954 Supreme Court landmark decision Brown v. Topeka Board of Education that ruled that separate-but-equal public school facilities were unconstitutional....The response in Southern states, where segregation was a God-ordained way of life, was an attempt to nullify the decision and prevent the Federal government from enacting any laws that might impede on white Southerners self-proclaimed right to discriminate against American citizens….Even before the Supreme Court handed down its decision on May 17, 1954, a day that Southern segregationists still refer to as Black Monday, several Southern legislators had begun legal maneuvers to forestall school integration. And then after the decision was rendered, four Southern States - Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama - went as far as to abolish or defund all or part of their public school systems. In Georgia, the state legislature passed a bill that made it a felony for any state or local school board official to spend any money on an integrated school. In Louisiana, the state legislature attempted to circumvent the decision by passing a law that allowed school officials to sort students by "achievement levels." And in both North Carolina and Florida, laws were enacted to prohibit employment of teachers who advocated for integration….Meanwhile white Southerners responded by organizing into a new movement called Citizens' Councils -- a forerunner of today's Tea Party movement. The inspirational leader of this movement was a circuit court judge from Mississippi named Tom P. Brady. In the aftermath of the decision, Judge Brady wrote a pamphlet entitled Black Monday…. Judge Brady's Black Monday pamphlet was a call to arms….Throw in an Obama or two and you've brought it up to date. The eight point platform goes on to affirm the integrity of the Constitution as it was originally drafted, to call for a return to "moral law," for "halting the present trend of national leadership toward socialism," to "resist the growing tendency of the federal government to foist 'benefits' upon a large segment of our populace at the price of federal control," and to reaffirm "the sovereignty of the states…."

Read the entire article @:
http://mydd.com/2010/7/10/the-racism-inherent-in-the-nullificati