On March 12, 1956, as the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) approached, two politicians rose in Congress to make speeches: Senator Walter F. George (D-GA) in the Senate and Representative Howard Smith (D-VA) in the House of Representatives. They delivered the identical speech, titled Declaration of Constitutional Principles, which came to be referred to informally as the Southern Manifesto. Drafted by Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Richard Russell of Georgia, it had been toned down by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Still, it was a bold, brazen document. It denounced the Brown v. Board of Education decision, calling it an “unwarranted exercise of power.”