Word: byrds
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...thereby interposed himself, with his legal privileges as Governor of a sovereign state, between the school board and the Federal Government. That action would be tested in the courts. So would all the other laws of massive resistance. Politician Almond, who would dearly love to step into Harry Byrd's shoes, would fight with all his considerable skills to keep the Commonwealth of Virginia the way the Byrd machine wants it. The national tragedy is that the 66th Governor of the Commonwealth, at a time when the nation needs the type of enlightened leadership that is its due from...
...Virginia's constitutional referendum on Jan. 9, 1956, the amendment carried, 304,154 to 146,164, and the Gray Plan had outlived its usefulness. Poor Governor Stanley, who never quite seemed to get the word, hailed the vote as a "mandate" for the Gray Plan. But Harry Byrd interpreted it as a mandate for something much tougher. He promptly warned the legislature to go slow in enacting the Gray Plan's provisions. In February, Byrd laid down the law with an outright demand for "massive resistance" against any sort of integration. And in July, Byrd met secretly...
...governor right in the middle-and that was where Lindsay Almond wanted to be. He had worked hard to regain his privileged standing in the Byrdhouse, but just in case his one deviation was still held against him, he announced for Governor in November 1956 without consulting Harry Byrd ahead of time. Whatever his private feelings may have been, Harry Byrd recognized Almond as a hot vote getter-and formidable Republican Ted Dalton was again running for Governor...
...With the Byrd organization's enthusiastic segregationist backing, Lindsay Almond let out all stops. Negroes, he cried, were "threatening government by N.A.A.C.P. in Virginia by the cold steel of federal bayonets, and we will have none of it." Ted Dalton, urging a system of limited integration, never really had a chance. And the dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock ruined him completely. Lindsay Almond was elected Governor of Virginia by a vote of 326,921 to 188,628-and the Byrd organization, playing fast and loose with segregationist emotions, was more firmly entrenched in power than ever...
...William Byrd I came to Virginia from England in 1672, became a tobacco planter, slave dealer and president of the Colonial Council; William Byrd II (1674-1744) owned Westover plantation, 179,000 acres overlooking the James River; Harry Byrd's father, Richard Evelyn Byrd (1860-1925), was speaker of the Virginia house of delegates and a U.S. district attorney; Harry's brother, the late Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, was the first man to fly to the North and South Poles...