In response to a order to integrate its schools, officials in Prince Edward County, Virginia closed its entire public school system instead. The most egregious violators simply closed the public schools. For instance, the Massive Resistance doctrine included a law that punished any public school that integrated by eliminating its state funds and eventually closing the school. On February 25, 1956, Senator Byrd issued the call for “Massive Resistance” - a collection of laws passed in response to the Brown decision that aggressively tried to forestall and prevent school integration. The Gray commission, named after State Senator Garland Gray, held that school attendance should not be compulsory money should be allocated to parents as tuition grants if they opposed integration and authorized local school boards would assign students to schools themselves.īy 1956, Senator Byrd had created a coalition of nearly 100 Southern politicians to sign on to his “Southern Manifesto” an agreement to resist the implementation of Brown. In August of 1954, Virginia Governor Thomas Bahnson Stanley created a commission to conspire to defy Brown. He became the leading architect behind Virginia’s diehard segregationist campaign. Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia described the opinion as “the most serious blow that has yet been struck against the rights of the states in a matter vitally affecting their authority and welfare.” At the time, Senator Byrd headed the “Byrd Machine,” Virginia’s most powerful political organization. James Eastland, the powerful Senator from Mississippi, declared that “the South will not abide by nor obey this legislative decision by a political body.” ![]() ![]() Board of Educationin the early afternoon of May 17, 1954, Southern white political leaders condemned the decision and vowed to defy it. ![]() Almost immediately after Chief Justice Earl Warren finished reading the Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Brown v.
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