FULBRIGHT, JAMES WILLIAM
James William Fulbright served as a U.S. sena-
tor from Arkansas from 1945 to 1974. Fulbright
played an important role in shaping U.S.
foreign policy as chairman of the Senate For-
eign Relations Committee. His opposition to
the VIETNAM WAR and to unbridled PRESIDEN-
TIAL POWER in foreign affairs contributed to
major shifts in the conduct of U.S. foreign
relations.
Fulbright was born in Sumner, Missouri, on
April 9, 1905, the son of a prosperous Arkansas
businessman. Fulbright was the youngest of four
children born to Jay and Roberta Waugh Ful-
bright.His father was a banker, farmer, and busi-
nessman. His mother wrote a column for the
family-owned Fayetteville newspaper. He
entered the University of Arkansas at the age of
16, and graduated in 1925. From 1925 to 1928,
Fulbright attended Oxford University, in Eng-
land, as a Rhodes Scholar. This educational
experience deepened his intellectual interests
and provided a strong background for public
life. He graduated from George Washington
University Law School in 1934, and then taught
at that school for two years. In 1936, he accepted
a teaching position at the University of
Arkansas. In 1939, he was appointed president
of the University of Arkansas. At age 34, he was
the youngest college president in the United
States. His tenure was short, however, as a new
governor dismissed him in 1941.
Fulbright then turned his focus to politics.
As a Democrat he was elected to the U.S. House
of Representatives in 1942. In 1945, he was
elected to the U.S. Senate. His previous time as
a Rhodes Scholar led him to sponsor the Ful-
bright Act of 1946, 22 U.S.C.A. § 245 et seq.,
which awards scholarships to U.S. citizens for
study and research abroad and to citizens from
other nations for study in the United States. The
establishment of the Fulbright Scholarship
exchange program has proved to be an endur-
ing legacy.
Fulbright, although personally a moderate
on matters of race, believed in the 1950s that he
needed to move to the right on race issues to pro-
tect his political future in Arkansas. This led him
to sign the Southern Manifesto, a 1956 docu-
ment signed by southern senators and represen-
tatives that expressed their displeasure at the
Supreme Court’s decision in BROWN V. BOARD
OF EDUCATION (Brown I ), 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct.
686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), which struck down
state-sponsored racially segregated public school
systems, and Brown v. Board of Education (Brown
II), 349 U.S. 294, 75 S. Ct. 753, 99 L. Ed. 1083
(1955), in which the Court directed that schools
be desegregated with “all deliberate speed.” The
manifesto condemned these decisions as abuses
of judicial power and approved of Southern
resistance, by all legal means, to the demand for
desegregation. Fulbright doomed his national
political prospects by signing the manifesto.
In the 1950s, Fulbright became a close friend
