Word: byrds
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...Dominion's population lives in the urban corridor which slashes diagonally across the state from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., on south through Fredericksburg to Richmond, and then down into the densely-populated complex around the Navy installations at Norfolk. At the same time that the Byrd Organization has trouble in this area, its traditional margins in Southside have been severely cut by the two-year old Virginia Conservative Party, a fringe group which seems to feel that ultra-conservatism is not ultra enough...
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...
During the last two years, however, certain social forces have been at work to undermine the traditional political power blocs. With the abolition of the poll tax in federal elections, registration surged and people began to vote in unprecedented numbers. Not only Negroes, but many whites. Young Harry Byrd, campaigning last summer to fill out the unexpired Senate term of his late father, even had to appeal to his audiences for a large voter turnout to offset the power of "pressure groups"--that is, Negroes...
...Spong, Jr., of Portsmouth, who knocked off Robertson in the Democratic primary (by 611 votes), and went on to defeat his Goldwater-Republican opponent in the November election by almost two-to-one. In what the press labeled "The Big Race," Spong outran his running-mate Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., by 56,000 votes. It was a striking display of how far Virginia has come in the past few years...