the nomination, 481,808 votes to 195,156. Clement easily defeated fringe candidate John R. Neal and other token opposition in the general election. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared state segregation laws unconstitutional in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Clement ordered state schools to comply with the law. In 1955, Clement vetoed a bill introduced by 85-year-old state senator Charles Stainback that would have effectively maintained segregation in schools in Fayette and Haywood counties. He also threatened to veto any attempt to change the state's mandatory school attendance law, and rejected a request by the Parents School Preference Committee to use the National Guard to prevent integration (as Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had done). In September 1956, he stationed National Guard troops in Clinton, Tennessee, to protect the first black students to attend Clinton High School from anti-integration protesters. Constitutionally ineligible to run for governor in 1958, Clement supported the successful run of his campaign manager and Commissioner of Agriculture, Buford Ellington, and returned to the practice of law. 1956 DNC keynote address By the mid-1950s, Clement had national aspirations. During the 1956 presidential race, he was among the candidates on the ballot for the party's vice presidential nomination. He was also chosen to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention that year in Chicago, as party leaders hoped his speaking ability could help offset the popularity of the Republican incumbent, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clement's speech resembled a standard Tennessee stump speech, with a strong evangelical, sermon-like tone. He derided the Republican Party as the "party of privilege and pillage," referred to Vice President Richard Nixon as the "vice hatchet man," and accused President Eisenhower of staring down the "green fairways of indifference" (a reference to Eisenhower's love of golf). He stated that Democrats would not "crucify the American farmer on a Republican cross of gold," recalling the Cross of Gold speech delivered by William Jennings Bryan at the party's 1896 convention. Clement's speech is often remembered for his repeated use of the phrase, "How long, America, O how long?" Clement's speech received raucous applause from convention delegates, and was well received by Democrats in general. Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King recalled watching the speech as a teenager and thinking afterward that Eisenhower and Nixon had no chance of winning. Future president Bill Clinton, then 9 years old, watched the speech from his