The 1956 Southern 500, the seventh running of the event, was a NASCAR Grand National Series event that was held on September 3, 1956, at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina. This race was considered to be the "Labor Day Classic" for 1956; complete with a pre-race beauty pageant with a judging panel led by Fonty Flock and a parade down the front stretch of the race track. By the 1990s, NASCAR's top-level series became a media circus that only races at facilities that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.