Word: byrds
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...simple as this: Should Virginia obey the law of the land by allowing Negro children to attend school with whites? Or should Virginia close its public schools, blindly following a legalistic road that might well lead to the violence that Virginia's leaders most deplore? U.S. Senator Harry Byrd, Virginia's benign but absolute political boss, accurately measures the dimensions of Virginia's problem. "We face," he said recently, "the gravest crisis since the War Between the States...
...even the South's: it is the nation's. Far more than anything that jackanapes (by Virginia standards) Governor Orval Faubus can do in ragtag (by Virginia standards) Arkansas, Virginia will set the lasting pattern of Southern integration-or defiance. Virginia's Senator Byrd has bitterly recognized that fact: the forces of integration, he said last month, are "working on the theory that if Virginia can be brought to her knees, they can march through the rest of the South singing Hallelujah...
Strange Alchemy. But the most important factor about Lindsay Almond's role is that he is the anti-integration straw boss for one of the nation's oldest, most powerful and in many ways most sophisticated political machines, led by Harry Byrd, a symbol of Southern leadership with the capacity and influence for achieving the greatest good-or the greatest evil...
...their strange alchemy, Harry Byrd, Lindsay Almond and the Virginia political organization are the real secret of Virginia's segregation struggle. Far from holding to Jefferson's faith in the good sense of the common people, the Byrd organization is an oligarchy, composed of the few, chosen by the few to make decisions for the many. "Let the laws be enforced by the white people of this country," cries Harry Byrd. He does not mean all the white people-or even most of them. Poll taxes and some of the nation's most restrictive registration laws hold...
Like a Club. In its oligarchic context, the Byrd organization is an alliance of gentlemen, and a gentleman is known more by his philosophy and politics than by his purse or pedigree (gentle-born...