25 фев 1956 г. - Massive Resistance
Описание:
On 25 February 1956, segregationist Democratic Senator Harry F Byrd made a speech calling for Massive Resistance to federally mandated school desegregation.
As the US Supreme Court deliberated Brown II, the governor of Virginia, Thomas B Stanley, appointed the Gray Commission composed of 32 state lawmakers, all white Americans, to craft a plan responding to Brown.
On 29 September, after a contentious debate regarding methodology, tactics and constitutionality both within the Gray Commission and in a month-long special legislative session, a plan was passed.
The main features of the plan included the automatic closure of any school that integrated, not just to those that chose to follow Brown but even school forced to do so by federal court orders.
The law also mandated that state funding be cut of to any school district that allowed any school in its system to desegregate.
By early autumn, just two years following the original Brown decision, the Commonwealth of Virginia had decided to fight the federal government to maintain its segregated school system.
The legislation and accompanying government actions are what became known as Massive Resistance.
A new governor, the Democratic supporter of Massive Resistance J Lindsay Almond, took office in January 1958.
His support of continued resistance to Brown was tested in September 1958.
Schools in three geographically diverse districts - Norfolk, Charlottesville and Warren County, were ordered by federal courts to integrate, but Governor Almond closed the schools, locking out 13,000 students.
On 19 January 1959, a federal court and the Virginia Supreme Court agreed in separate cases that the state's action of closing public schools violated the US Constitution.
Despite strong support for continued Massive Resistance, the Perrow Plan passed both houses of the Virginia Legislature and became law.
Most school districts, including those that the governor had closed, slowly began integrating schools.
Yet with even the last resisting school finally allowing integration, by 1964 only 5% of African American students in Virginia attended school with white children.
It was only after the US Supreme Court ruling of "Green v. New Kent County" that the farce of "freedom of choice" was abolished and significant inroads made towards public school desegregation in Virginia.
Brown was a landmark decision, but Virginia was not unique in its attempts at interposition and the erection of legal and procedural obstacles designed to inhibit desegregation throughout much of the South.
Long-term patterns of desegregated schools also existed in urban areas in the North.
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U.S. Civil Rights Movement
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