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.
- ^ Mays, David J (2008). Race, Reason, and Massive Resistance. University of Georgia Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-0820330259.
- ^ Glasrud, Bruce; Ely, James W. (May 1977). "The Crisis of Conservative Virginia: The Byrd Organization and the Politics of Massive Resistance (book review)". The Journal of Southern History. 43 (2). Southern Historical Association: 324–325. doi:10.2307/2207385. JSTOR 2207385.
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