Circumventing Brown Ruling By New State Efforts To Maintain Segregation
Senator Byrd waged vocal and bitter opposition to the high court's ruling and subsequent actions to implement public school integration in Virginia. Leading the state's Conservative Democratic political machine, on February 24, 1956, he declared a campaign which became known as "Massive Resistance" to avoid compliance. Byrd stated: "If we can organize the Southern States for massive resistance to this order I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South."
To implement Massive Resistance, in 1956, the Byrd Organization-controlled Virginia General Assembly passed a series of laws known as the Stanley plan, after Governor Thomas Bahnson Stanley. One of these laws forbade any integrated schools from receiving state funds, and authorized the governor to order closed any such school. Another of these laws established a three-member Pupil Placement Board that would determine which school a student would attend. The decision of these Boards was based almost entirely on race. Another facet of these laws was the creation of tuition grants which could be given to students so they could attend a private school of their choice; again, in practice, this meant support of all-white schools that appeared as a response to forced integration (the "segregation academies").
Later in 1956, the NAACP then filed lawsuits around the state in response to these laws in an attempt to force integration of Virginia schools. By 1958, things had come to a head. Federal courts ordered public schools in Warren County, the cities of Charlottesville and Norfolk and Arlington County to integrate.
Read more about this topic: Massive Resistance
Famous quotes containing the words brown, ruling, state, efforts, maintain and/or segregation:
“They won’t come to learn, only to stare. I’ll be a freak in a sideshow: Lazarus the Second! Fifty cents to look, a dollar to touch.”
—Karl Brown (1897–1990)
“What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The state is a creation of nature and man is by nature a political animal.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“It’s immoral to steal, but you can take things.
The dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“No care, no stop; so senseless of expense
That he will neither know how to maintain it
Nor cease his flow of riot, takes no account
How things go from him, nor resumes no care
Of what is to continue.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!”
—George C. Wallace (b. 1919)