Massive resistance
Massive resistance was a strategy declared by U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. of Virginia and his son Harry Jr.'s brother-in-law, James M. Thomson, who represented Alexandria in the Virginia General Assembly,[1] to get the state's white politicians to pass laws and policies to prevent public school desegregation, particularly after Brown v. Board of Education.[2]
Many schools and an entire school system were shut down in 1958 and 1959 in attempts to block integration. This lasted until the Virginia Supreme Court and a special three-judge panel of federal district judges from the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting at Norfolk, declared those policies unconstitutional.
Although most of the laws created to implement massive resistance were overturned by state and federal courts within a year, some aspects of the campaign against integrated public schools continued in Virginia for many more years.
Gray Commission[edit]
A little more than a month after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown, on June 26, 1954,[note 1] Senator Byrd vowed to stop integration attempts in Virginia's schools. By the end of that summer, Governor Thomas B. Stanley, a member of the Byrd Organization, had appointed a Commission on Public Education, consisting of 32 white Democrats and chaired by Virginia Senator Garland "Peck" Gray of rural Sussex County.[5] This became known as the Gray Commission.[6] Before the commission issued its final report on November 11, 1955, the Supreme Court had responded to segregationists' delaying tactics by issuing the Brown II decision and directing federal district judges to implement desegregation "with all deliberate speed."[7] The Gray Plan recommended that the General Assembly pass legislation and allow for amendment of the state constitution so as to repeal Virginia's compulsory school attendance law, to allow the Governor to close schools rather than allow their integration, to establish pupil assignment structures, and finally to provide vouchers to parents who chose to enroll their children in segregated private schools. Virginia voters approved the Gray Plan Amendment on January 9, 1956.[8]
1956: Circumventing Brown via the Stanley Plan[edit]
On February 24, 1956, Byrd declared a campaign which became known as "massive resistance" to avoid implementing public school integration in Virginia. Leading the state's conservative Democrats, he proclaimed "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."[9] Within a month, Senator Byrd and 100 other conservative Southern politicians signed what became known as the "Southern Manifesto", condemning the Supreme Court's decisions concerning racial integration in public places as violating states' rights.
Before the next school year began, the NAACP filed lawsuits to end school segregation in Norfolk, Arlington, Charlottesville and Newport News. 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, passed on September 21, 1956, 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. These laws also created tuition grant structures which could channel funds formerly allocated to closed schools to students so they could attend private, segregated schools of their choice. In practice, this caused the creation of "segregation academies".
Aftermath[edit]
Virginia experienced no incidents which required National Guard intervention. In 1969, Virginians elected Republican A. Linwood Holton Jr., who had opposed massive resistance and labeled it "the state's pernicious anti-desegregation strategy," as governor. The following year, Gov. Holton placed his children (including future Virginia First Lady Anne Holton) in Richmond's mostly African-American public schools, to considerable publicity. He also increased the number of blacks and women employed in the state government and in 1973 created the Virginia Governor's Schools Program.[note 3] Furthermore, when Virginia revised its state constitution in 1971, it included one of the strongest provisions concerning public education of any state in the country.[14]
In 2009, as part of their "American Soil Series", the Virginia Stage Company featured Line in the Sand, a play by Chris Hannah. It reflects the emotions and tensions in Norfolk during massive resistance in both the political arena and through the eyes of the students of the "Lost Class".[41]
On July 16, 2009, the Richmond Times-Dispatch apologized in an editorial for its role and the role of its parent company and its sister newspaper, The Richmond News Leader, in championing massive resistance to human rights, acknowledging that "the Times-Dispatch was complicit" in an "unworthy cause": "The record fills us with regret, which we have expressed before. Massive Resistance inflicted pain then. Memories remain painful. Editorial enthusiasm for a dreadful doctrine still affects attitudes toward the newspaper."[42]
At the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia's service of Repentance, Reconciliation & Healing on November 2, 2013, specific mention was made of the actions of C. G. Gordon Moss, Dean of Longwood College in attempting to heal the divisions in Prince Edward County in 1963, and the retaliation he experienced.[43][44] Several months earlier, the vestry of Johns Memorial Episcopal Church in Farmville, Virginia issued a similar apology during the 50th anniversary commemoration of the school closings.[45][46]
Most segregation academies founded in Virginia during Massive Resistance are still thriving more than a half century later and some like Hampton Roads Academy, the Fuqua School, Nansemond-Suffolk Academy and Isle of Wight Academy continue to expand in the 21st century. Enrollment at Isle of Wight Academy now stands at approximately 650 students, the most ever enrolled at the school.[47] In 2016 Nansemond Suffolk Academy opened a second campus, that includes an additional 22,000 square foot building for students in pre-kindergarten through grade 3.[48] All of these schools had officially adopted non-discrimination policies and begun admitting non-white students by the end of the 1980s and like other private schools, are now eligible for federal education money through what are known as Title programs that flow through public school districts.[49] However, few blacks can afford the high cost of tuition to send their children to these private schools. In some cases their association with "old money" and past discrimination still cause some tension in the community, especially among non-whites and students of the local public schools. Their racist past may cause black parents who can afford the tuition to be reluctant to enroll their children in these schools.[50]
The abandonment of public schools by most whites in Virginia's rural counties that lie within the Black Belt and white flight from inner cities to suburbs after the failure of "Massive Resistance" has ultimately led to increasingly racially and economically isolated public schools in Virginia. In total, as of 2016 there were 74,515 students in these isolated schools, including 17 percent of all black students in Virginia’s public schools and 8 percent of all Hispanic students. Many of these isolated schools are inner city schools in Richmond, Norfolk, Petersburg, Roanoke, and Newport News. In contrast, less than 1 percent of Virginia's non-Hispanic white students attended these isolated schools.[51]