On March 12, 1956, Howard Smith of Virginia, chairman of the House Rules Committee approached, and rose to the speaker's podium in the U.S. Senate to announce the creation of the latest weapon in the segregationist area, the Southern Manifesto. It was a bold, brazen document, signed by eighty-two representatives and nineteen senators. This decision determined that separate school facilities for black and white school children were inherently unequal. The Manifesto attacked Brown as an abuse of judicial power that trespassed upon states’ rights. The Southern Manifesto, formally titled a Declaration of Constitutional Principles. The Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision, calling it an “unwarranted exercise of power.” The Southern Manifesto's signers pledged to “use all lawful means” of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The declaration of the Southern Manifesto was not the first act in the South's massive resistance campaign against school desegregation. However, it was the most important.