Word: byrds
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Seventeen years ago V.O. Key wrote that Virginia was a "political museum piece." It has changed. But things haven't changed as much as the prophets of the total collapse of the Byrd Machine would like to think...
...usual comments about the demise of the Byrd Organization in Virginia were heard once again after the Democratic primary last summer and the general election this fall. The two symbols of the old order, Rep. Howard W. Smith, the House Rules Committee chairman, and Senator A. Willis Robertson lost their seats in Congress in close primary fights, and the Republican Party picked up two more seats in Virginia's delegation to the House on November 8. They now control four...
...Byrd Machine (its supporters refer to it as The Organization) has shown remarkable durability over the past 40 years. It has changed a little bit--maybe more--but it keeps on winning. The success of the Machine was predicated on a low voter turnout. That meant not only discouraging Negroes from voting, but also many poor whites. There have never been any outright bars to the ballot in Virginia, but intricate laws concerning residence requirements and an ingeniously devised web of poll taxes accomplished the same objective in a more sutble way. The electorate was kept within manageably limits...
During the mid-1950s, the power of the Byrd Machine and the forces and policies it represented, was suddenly jeopardized. In 1954, a large group of liberal-to-moderate delegates were elected to the General Assembly in Richmond. These "Young Turks," as they were called, vociferously questioned the whole range of conservative ideas imbedded in Virginia's political life. This in itself was an almost unprecedented situation for the Old Dominion, but when federal courts ordered school integration, the conflict was brought to a head...
After a dramatic battle in the Assembly, the Byrd people managed to pass a series of laws which had the effect of closing down any Virginia public school which integrated. It was a sad maneuver--some schools remained closed for over hall a decade--but it saved the Organization. In plotting this course, the Machine branded the young Turks as the integrationists. Yet after the storm dies down, the Machine embraced the tokenism that gradually spread across the nation. This slow change was demonstrated by Mills E. Godwin, who was elected Governor last year, but who only ten years...