Massive Resistance

Definition of Massive Resistance

• In Virginia, during the late 1950s, many people were against the idea of having white or African American children go to school together. In many areas of VA, the schools closed rather than integrate. The General Assembly finally ruled that the public schools in VA were integrated by the mid 1960s.

Massive Resistance

• Massive Resistance became Virginia’s policy to prevent school desegregation in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. Many of Virginia’s white leaders resisted integration with all of their considerable political and legal means.

The Story of Massive Resistance

• The story of massive resistance and of black Virginians’ protests against segregation began in the early 1950s and continues today.

Senator Harry Flood Byrd

Senator Harry Flood Byrd

• elected senator in 1933

• did not believe in integration and fought against the law that said that segregated schools were illegal

• To resist this he helped begin the program called Massive Resistance

J. Lindsay Almond

Lindsay Almond

• Supported Harry Byrd

• Sept. 8, 1958- Almond closed the schools in Warren County

• Sept. 19, 1958- he closed two schools in Charlottesville

• Sept. 27, 1958- he closed six schools in Norfolk

Mills Godwin(where was he from?)

• Was the leader of the massive resistance movement and opposed school integration in the 1950s

• later hailed as a progressive

• reforms included:– creation of community college system– the initiation of the state sales tax and development

of a powerful economic development campaign.

Barbara Johns

• She was 16 years old when she led 450 students at all-black Robert R. Moton High School out their classes in a two-week strike to protest separate and very unequal educational conditions. Prince Edward County.

• Rather than build a new high school, the school board erected 3 large plywood buildings called “tar paper shacks”

• 1951-strike at Moton High School is seen by some as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement

Robert R. Moton High School

Farmville, VA

Tar Paper Shacks

Green v. School Board of New Kent County

• After the Brown v. Board of Education case, New Kent County continued to be segregated.

• After the case only 115 black students chose to go to an all white school and no whites went to the black schools.

Brown v. Board of Education

• Oliver Brown and the parents of 12 other black children filed a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education protesting the city’s segregation of black and white students.

• The NAACP argued that segregated schooling had a harmful psychological effect on black children, but the suit was dismissed on the grounds that no law had been broken.

Brown v. Board of Education

• Topeka was legally authorized by the state of Kansas to maintain separate schools for white and black students.

• The court had left implementation up to state and local authorities, setting no

• firm deadlines for compliance”

• This case also combined the Barbara Johns case from VA along with others.

• Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill, and Henry Marsh were NAACP lawyers

Oliver Hill & Spottswood Robinson

• Oliver Hill is best known for his role in the Brown v. Board of Education

• Hill was one of the trial lawyers in the resulting desegregation lawsuit Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County

• 1951-Hill & his partner, Robinson received word that students at all-black R.R. Moton High School in Farmville had walked out of the leaky, poorly heated buildings that served as their school.

Poll Tax

• Poll tax is a capital tax level equally on every adult in the community.

• The tax has long been attacked as being unfair burden upon those less able to pay.

• Has connected voting disenfranchising many blacks as well as poor whites, because payment of the tax was a prerequisite for voting.

Poll Tax

• Federal courts became less strict about interpreting the 15th Amendment, which allowed Virginia and other Southern states increasing latitude to disenfranchise black voters.

• 1904-anyone applying to register would face a test of literacy& memorization.

• Constitution poll tax was of $1.50 a year paid every three years preceding election.