246-526: The Stanley Plan was a package of 13 statutes adopted in September 1956 by the U.S. state of Virginia . The statutes were designed to ensure racial segregation would continue in that state's public schools despite the unanimous ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that school segregation was unconstitutional. The legislative program was named for Governor Thomas B. Stanley ,
492-481: A charter for a new colony to the Virginia Company of London . The group financed an expedition under Christopher Newport that established a settlement named Jamestown in 1607. Though more settlers soon joined, many were ill-prepared for the dangers of the new settlement. As the colony's president, John Smith secured food for the colonists from nearby tribes, but after he left in 1609, this trade stopped and
738-490: A clear and present danger to the operation of an "efficient" public school system (as required by the Virginia constitution). He also asserted that in order to protect the health and welfare of the people, integration must be opposed. He made it clear that he intended to stop all integration. He said he believed that if even one school integrated, integration would sweep over all of Virginia. The Stanley plan had two main aspects,
984-546: A domino effect that would lead to integration across the entire South. Preventing this from happening became the preeminent concern of Stanley, Byrd, and the others. Stanley called the Gray Commission back into session in late May 1956, but the group was unable to immediately come up with any new recommendations. Attorney General Almond publicly urged Stanley to call a special session of the legislature on May 31, but House Speaker Moore demanded to know what proposals Almond felt
1230-683: A first language . Spanish is the next most commonly spoken language, with 7.5% (611,831) of Virginia households, though age is a factor; 8.7% (120,560) of Virginians under age eighteen speak Spanish. Of Spanish speakers, 60.6% reported speaking English "very well", but again, of those under age eighteen, 78.7% speak English "very well". Arabic was the third most commonly spoken language with around 0.8% of residents, followed by Chinese languages and Vietnamese each with over 0.7%, and then Korean and Tagalog , just under 0.7% and 0.6% respectively. Brown v. Board of Education#Brown II Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 347 U.S. 483 (1954),
1476-639: A group of Spanish Jesuits , explored the Chesapeake Bay during the 16th century. To help counter Spain's colonies in the Caribbean , Queen Elizabeth I of England supported Walter Raleigh 's 1584 expedition to the Atlantic coast of North America . The name "Virginia" was used by Captain Arthur Barlowe in the expedition's report, and may have been suggested by Raleigh or Elizabeth (perhaps noting her status as
1722-587: A racially segregated society , and in 1902 rewrote the state constitution to include a poll tax and other voter registration measures that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites. New economic forces meanwhile industrialized the Commonwealth. Virginian James Albert Bonsack invented the tobacco cigarette rolling machine in 1880 leading to new large-scale production centered around Richmond. Railroad magnate Collis Potter Huntington founded Newport News Shipbuilding in 1886, which
1968-425: A raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia , in an attempt to start a slave revolt across the southern states. The polarized national response to his raid, capture, trial, and execution that December marked a tipping point for many who believed slavery would need to be ended by force. Abraham Lincoln 's 1860 election further convinced many southern supporters of slavery that his opposition to its expansion would ultimately mean
2214-538: A referendum for January 9, 1956, to call a state constitutional convention. A number of individuals and organizations came out against the Gray Commission's proposals as too moderate, however. Among these were Representative (and former Governor) William M. Tuck , Virginia House Speaker E. Blackburn Moore (a close friend of Byrd's), the Defenders, Kilpatrick, and even Gray himself. For nearly three weeks in late November and early December, Kilpatrick wrote almost daily in
2460-402: A series of ambush-style killings between colonists and natives under Chief Powhatan and his brother began, resulting in mass starvation in the colony that winter. By the end of the colony's first fourteen years, over eighty percent of the roughly eight thousand settlers transported there had died. Demand for exported tobacco , however, fueled the need for more workers. Starting in 1618,
2706-590: A Democrat, who proposed the program and successfully pushed for its enactment. The Stanley plan was a critical element in the policy of " massive resistance " to the Brown ruling advocated by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. The plan also included measures designed to curb the Virginia state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which many Virginia segregationists believed
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#17328512130402952-598: A bill to require a statewide referendum in November 1956 on whether school segregation should be state policy. The Assembly recessed on August 28 for the Labor Day holiday, and did not come back into session until September 4. The same day, Governor Stanley conferred with Rep. Smith, Delegate Gray, and House Speaker Moore. Their discussion focused on the Stanley plan's lack of an appeals process for pupil assignments. Stanley agreed to
3198-537: A bloc of 17 state senators had formed to oppose any segregationist plan which did not contain an option for local school districts to integrate. Faced with defeat in the Senate, Governor Stanley introduced a new version of his plan on September 12 that would: The new plan drew extensive criticism. Southside legislators feared that only all-white schools would close. Stanley asserted that his plan would permit him to close black schools as well as white ones if an all-white school
3444-697: A bloody Confederate victory. Union General George B. McClellan organized the Army of the Potomac , which landed on the Virginia Peninsula in March 1862 and reached the outskirts of Richmond that June. With Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston wounded in fighting outside the city, command of his Army of Northern Virginia fell to Robert E. Lee . Over the next month, Lee drove the Union army back , and starting that September led
3690-439: A century, at a magnitude of 5.8, struck central Virginia on August 23, 2011 . 35 million years ago, a bolide impacted what is now eastern Virginia. The resulting Chesapeake Bay impact crater may explain what earthquakes and subsidence the region does experience. A meteor impact is also theorized as the source of Lake Drummond , the largest of the two natural lakes in the state . The Commonwealth's carbonate rock
3936-538: A change in his status within the Byrd Organization. Initially, Senator Byrd had kept Stanley out of his inner circle's legislative discussions. But by late spring Byrd began including Stanley in these talks. Byrd and his close political allies were pressing for extreme measures (such as closing schools) in response to integration, and Stanley realized that action had to be taken soon or integration would occur before these measures could be enacted. In this regard, Stanley
4182-413: A clear and present danger to the public safety of citizens in those districts which integrated. In an effort to strengthen the Stanley plan's interposition elements, the bill also authorized circuit courts to file injunctions against any school district which violated the assignment decrees—which invited the prospect of pitting state courts against federal ones. Delegate Thomson introduced a bill to establish
4428-537: A compromise that would allow an administrative appeal (through an as-yet-to-be-worked-out process), followed by a required appeal to state courts and lower federal courts before any appeal could be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Stanley plan seemed to suffer a serious blow the following day, however, when the Virginia State Board of Education voted not to endorse the plan. Four members strongly opposed withholding state funds from integrated schools, which led to
4674-452: A five-point legislative program: 1) No public school integration would be tolerated in Virginia; 2) School districts which integrated would lose state funding; 3) The state law permitting school districts to be sued would be repealed; 4) The power to assign students to schools would be taken away from local school boards and transferred to the governor; and 5) The governor would have the power to close any school district which integrated. Despite
4920-531: A governor who ignored the assembly and sent him back to England against his will. William Berkeley was named governor in 1642, just as the turmoil of the English Civil War and Interregnum permitted the colony greater autonomy. As a supporter of the king, Berkeley welcomed other Cavaliers who fled to Virginia. He surrendered to Parliamentarians in 1652, but after the 1660 Restoration made him governor again, he blocked assembly elections and exacerbated
5166-493: A key stumbling block. After Vinson died in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice. Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American students in California school systems following Mendez v. Westminster . However, Eisenhower invited Earl Warren to a White House dinner, where the president told him: "These [southern whites] are not bad people. All they are concerned about
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#17328512130405412-608: A major urban business and shopping center in Tysons , Virginia's largest office market. Neighboring Prince William County , with over 450,000 residents, is Virginia's second-most populous county and home to Marine Corps Base Quantico , the FBI Academy , and Manassas National Battlefield Park . Arlington County is the smallest self-governing county in the U.S. by land area, and local politicians have proposed reorganizing it as an independent city due to its high density. Loudoun County
5658-419: A meeting of the Gray Commission to consider the governor's proposal. Stanley said he would not oppose the Gray Commission's proposal to assign students on the basis of factors other than race (which might lead to some integration). Stanley's concession, The Washington Post reported, was made because it was widely assumed that the Gray Commission was assumed to be strongly in favor of the pupil assignment plan and
5904-526: A month-to-month basis so they could close schools on short notice if ordered to desegregate. But wealthy districts such as Arlington and Norfolk let it be known that they would defy state control and integrate. Outside of the Southside, there seemed little support for Stanley's plan. This lack of support led to a shift in Stanley's legislative proposals. Originally, the governor had sought discretionary authority to withhold funds from integrated school districts; now
6150-460: A more moderate response. But the moderate segregationists, too, had some early successes. A resolution declaring the Brown decision null and void was defeated by the state house on January 18. As moderates battled extremists in the General Assembly and time wore on, many state legislators began to feel (with school budgets due in just 60 days on May 30) that there was not enough time to pass
6396-437: A national park, but is protected by both state and federal legislation and the inter-state Chesapeake Bay Program . Virginia is divided into 95 counties and 38 independent cities , which the U.S. Census Bureau describes as county-equivalents . This general method of treating cities and counties on par with each other is unique to Virginia and stretches back to the influence of Williamsburg and Norfolk in
6642-498: A number of legislators. The bills were merged so that only five were reported from the committee and passed by the Assembly. A final bill passed on the last day of the special session created a racial issues investigative committee. This legislation established a 10-member Assembly committee composed of six delegates and four senators. The committee was charged with investigating the effect of integration on public schools, racial matters in
6888-411: A program to provide tuition grants to students in shuttered school districts so they could attend a nonsectarian school of their choice. (The original Gray Commission plan awarded tuition grants only to parents in an integrated school system who did not want their child attending an integrated school, or to parents in localities which voluntarily closed their school system to avoid integration.) Thirteen of
7134-535: A progressive city, was one of the last holdouts for school desegregation. In Moberly, Missouri , the schools were desegregated, as ordered. However, after 1955, the African-American teachers from the local "negro school" were not retained; this was ascribed to poor performance. They appealed their dismissal in Naomi Brooks et al., Appellants, v. School District of City of Moberly, Missouri, Etc., et al. ; but it
7380-423: A pupil assignment plan, whether to require local approval of integration or local approval of taxes to support integration, and repeal of state laws permitting school districts to be sued). Although the full Gray Commission met publicly the following day, they were secretly joined in executive session by Governor Stanley. Stanley announced that he was going to support a special session of the legislature, and that if
7626-624: A referendum and went into effect in 1971. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected as governor in the United States, and in 1992, Bobby Scott became the first Black congressman from Virginia since 1888. The expansion of federal government offices into Northern Virginia's suburbs during the Cold War boosted the region's population and economy. The Central Intelligence Agency outgrew their offices in Foggy Bottom during
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7872-714: A response. Accommodating this extremist sentiment, the pupil assignment plan approved at the July 2 meeting was fairly weak. After the meeting, Gray independently asked Mays to draft a stronger pupil assignment proposal. Events soon polarized the state of Virginia on the school segregation issue. On July 12, Judge John Paul Jr. , of the Western District Court of Virginia ordered the racial integration of public schools in Charlottesville, Virginia . On July 31, Eastern District Court of Virginia Judge Albert V. Bryan Sr. , ordered
8118-435: A school board could petition to have the schools reopened, although this would require that the Assembly take over the district, the governor to act as the Assembly's agent, and the governor to implement a segregationist pupil assignment plan. The governor's opponents, however, countered with their own plan in which each school board would retain the right to make pupil assignments (although pupil assignments could now be appealed
8364-411: A secret meeting of the Gray Commission's executive committee had taken place on May 27 which Representative Howard W. Smith , Representative Watkins Moorman Abbitt , Representative Burr Harrison , Tuck, and other outsiders had attended. The group approved of Stanley's March 9 proposal to cut off all state funds for any school district which integrated, and discussed a number of other proposals (including
8610-426: A seven-member Assembly committee to investigate any group seeking to influence public opinion in the state, teacher quality, uniformity of courses and curriculum in the public schools, and the effects of integration on public education. From September 4 to 7, the Assembly heard numerous witnesses testify for and against the various plans. State Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. (son of U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr.) endorsed
8856-528: A signatory of the UNESCO declaration. The United States and the Soviet Union were both at the height of the Cold War during this time, and U.S. officials, including Supreme Court justices, were highly aware of the harm that segregation and racism were doing to America's international image. When Justice William O. Douglas traveled to India in 1950, the first question he was asked was, "Why does America tolerate
9102-548: A significant setback in the House Appropriations Committee on September 14, when supporters of a local option won a narrow vote to amend the Stanley plan to permit local districts to integrate. The amended plan was reported to the House floor. Stanley immediately proposed yet another new plan which automatically cut off funds to any or all portions of a school district which integrated. Under the new Stanley plan, however,
9348-638: A single local jurisdiction integrated. Also speaking before the group, Attorney General Almond said the McCue plan would not stop integration lawsuits and probably would violate the state constitution. At the end of its meeting, the Gray Commission voted 19-to-12 to abandon its original proposals and support the Stanley plan. The meeting and vote were contentious. According to local news media, "the Commission capitulated to tremendous pressure from state leaders to junk its own pupil assignment plan". The Commission also approved
9594-424: A special session of the General Assembly to reconsider the Gray Commission proposals. In May, at least one state delegate urged the General Assembly to call itself into special session. During the spring and into the summer, Stanley began meeting with Senator Byrd, State Senator Gray, and others to strategize about a course of action. Byrd was concerned that one or more local school districts might integrate, creating
9840-798: A strategy called " massive resistance ", and the General Assembly passed a package of laws in 1956 that cut off funding to local schools that desegregated , causing some to close. Courts ruled the strategy unconstitutional, and on February 2, 1959, Black students integrated schools in Arlington and Norfolk , where they were known as the Norfolk 17 . County leaders in Prince Edward, however, instead shut their school system in June 1959. The Supreme Court ordered them to reopen and integrate their public schools , which finally happened in September 1964. Federal passage of
10086-602: A strong effect on eastern and southeastern coastal areas, making the climate there warmer but also more constant. Most of Virginia's recorded extremes in temperature and precipitation have occurred in the Blue Ridge Mountains and areas west. Virginia receives an average of 43.47 inches (110 cm) of precipitation annually, with the Shenandoah Valley being the state's driest region. Virginia has around 35–45 days with thunderstorms annually, and storms are common in
Stanley Plan - Misplaced Pages Continue
10332-501: A stronger version which permitted a funding cut-off whether a district integrated voluntarily or not. Kenneth Patty , Assistant Attorney General, ended up drafting the revised bill for the governor. After four days of work, Patty finished his draft of the funding cut-off legislation on August 13. On August 14, Governor Stanley announced publicly that the main thrust of his legislative proposal would be to withhold funds from any local school district which integrated. In response, Gray called
10578-433: A substitute school closing bill on July 25 that limited the conditions under which the governor could close schools but which Almond thought was more likely to pass constitutional muster. On July 26, Southside politicians attempted to force a vote through the Gray Commission which endorsed the Stanley plan (as redrafted by Almond), but the vote failed. The commission did vote, however, to have Mays draft legislation to implement
10824-410: A three-member "pupil assignment board"). Any parents with children in a school could challenge the assignment of a child to that school. Appeals would be required to go through the state court system after leaving the pupil assignment board; in the meantime, the child would remain at their original school (a process intended to delay the assignment of a black student to an all-white school). To ensure that
11070-482: A tuition voucher to attend a private school) or opt to not take state funding. Governor Stanley called the General Assembly into special session on November 30, 1955, to consider adopting the Gray Commission's report (although not its actual recommendations). During what one newspaper called a "hasty, almost hysterical four-day session", the General Assembly "adopted" the Gray Commission's recommendations—although it did not enact them into law. The legislature did approve
11316-592: A way of circumventing desegregation, and the Almond decision struck directly at this proposal. The Gray Commission issued its report just five days after the Virginia Supreme Court's decision in Almond . The report, which wholeheartedly supported racial segregation in schools and denounced the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision, made a number of recommendations. Two stood out. First, the Commission proposed that
11562-701: Is also the site of the region's main seaport and Naval Station Norfolk , the world's largest naval base. Virginia's history begins with several Indigenous groups , including the Powhatan . In 1607, the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World , leading to Virginia's nickname as the Old Dominion . Slaves from Africa and land from displaced native tribes fueled
11808-602: Is called the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, named after the river of the same name that flows through it. The Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains are in the southwest corner of Virginia, south of the Allegheny Plateau . In this region, rivers flow northwest into the Ohio River basin. The Virginia Seismic Zone has not had a history of regular earthquake activity. Earthquakes are rarely above 4.5 in magnitude . The Commonwealth's largest earthquake in at least
12054-480: Is filled with more than 4,000 limestone caves , ten of which are open for tourism, including the popular Luray Caverns and Skyline Caverns . Virginia's iconic Natural Bridge is the remaining roof of a collapsed limestone cave. Coal mining takes place in the three mountainous regions. More than 72 million tons of other non-fuel resources, such as slate , kyanite , sand, or gravel, were mined in Virginia in 2020 . The largest known deposits of uranium in
12300-412: Is inherently unequal because of its psychological impact upon the segregated children. To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone. The Court supported this conclusion with citations—in a footnote, not
12546-580: Is on trial both at home and abroad, ... the extent to which we maintain the spirit of our constitution with its Bill of Rights, will in the long run do more to make it both secure and the object of adulation than the number of hydrogen bombs we stockpile." In 1951, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas , in the United States District Court for
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#173285121304012792-540: Is the fastest-growing county in the state. In western Virginia, Roanoke city and Montgomery County , part of the Blacksburg–Christiansburg metropolitan area , both have surpassed a population of 100,000 since 2018. On the western edge of the Tidewater region is Virginia's capital, Richmond , which has a population of around 230,000 in its city proper and over 1.3 million in its metropolitan area. On
13038-407: Is the subject of an integrationist lawsuit, until such time as the Assembly desires to reestablish the local school system; 6) Vest all power to admit and/or assign students to schools in the hands of the Assembly; and 7) Require the Assembly to assign pupils to the schools they currently attend, and require that the assignment of any new pupils or changes to assignments be approved by the Assembly. (At
13284-516: Is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes." Nevertheless, the Justice Department sided with the African-American plaintiffs. While all but one justice personally rejected segregation, the judicial restraint faction questioned whether the Constitution gave the court the power to order its end. The activist faction believed
13530-619: The Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge , which marks the beginning of the Outer Banks . State agencies control about one-third of protected land in the state, and the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation manages over 75,900 acres (307.2 km ) in forty Virginia state parks and 59,222 acres (239.7 km ) in 65 Natural Area Preserves , plus three undeveloped parks. Breaks Interstate Park crosses
13776-560: The Brown ruling. However, this changed when James J. Kilpatrick , editor of The Richmond News Leader in Richmond, Virginia , quickly adopted a defiant and unyielding opposition to racial integration of public schools. Kilpatrick adopted the pre– American Civil War constitutional theory of interposition , and began publicly pushing for the state of Virginia to actively oppose the Supreme Court. Kilpatrick's hardening position, historian Joseph J. Thorndike has written, "likely...helped stiffen
14022-620: The Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965), and their later enforcement by the Justice Department , helped end racial segregation in Virginia and overturn Jim Crow laws . In 1967, the Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on interracial marriage with Loving v. Virginia . In 1968, Governor Mills Godwin called a commission to rewrite the state constitution. The new constitution, which banned discrimination and removed articles that now violated federal law, passed in
14268-555: The Committee of Nine . During the post-war Reconstruction era , African Americans were able to unite in communities, particularly around Richmond , Danville , and the Tidewater region , and take a greater role in Virginia society; many achieved some land ownership during the 1870s. Virginia adopted a constitution in 1868 which guaranteed political, civil, and voting rights , and provided for free public schools. However, with many railroad lines and other infrastructure destroyed during
14514-688: The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, the decision's 14 pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II (1955) only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed". In the Southern United States , the reaction to Brown among most white people
14760-525: The Greensboro, North Carolina school board declared that it would abide by the Brown ruling. This was the result of the initiative of D. E. Hudgins Jr., a former Rhodes Scholar and prominent attorney, who chaired the school board. This made Greensboro the first, and for years the only, city in the South, to announce its intent to comply. However, others in the city resisted integration, putting up legal obstacles to
15006-822: The Korean War , and moved to Langley in 1961, in part due to a decision by the National Security Council that the agency relocate outside the District of Columbia. The Pentagon , built in Arlington during World War II as the headquarters of the Department of Defense, was struck by a hijacked plane in the September 11, 2001 attacks . Mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and in Virginia Beach in 2019 led to passage of gun control measures in 2020. Racial injustice and
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#173285121304015252-475: The Massive Resistance movement that included the closing of schools rather than desegregating them. For several decades after the Brown decision, African-American teachers, principals, and other school staff who worked in segregated Black schools were fired or laid off as Southerners sought to create a system of integrated schools with White leadership. According to historian Michael Fultz, "In many ways
15498-577: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Virginia. Five of the bills expanded the state's definitions of barratry , champerty , and maintenance . The eleven other bills collectively required the following groups to file a financial report and membership list annually with state: any group which promotes or opposes state legislation aimed at any race; any organization attempting to influence public opinion on behalf of any race; or any group raising funds to employ legal counsel in connection with racial litigation. By September 13,
15744-670: The Southwest Mountains around Charlottesville . The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains with the highest points in the Commonwealth, the tallest being Mount Rogers at 5,729 feet (1,746 m). The Ridge-and-Valley region is west of the mountains, carbonate rock based, and includes the Massanutten Mountain ridge and the Great Appalachian Valley , which
15990-701: The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria had over 5,050. High-school student Barbara Rose Johns started a strike in 1951 at her underfunded and segregated school in Prince Edward County . The protests led Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill to file a lawsuit against the county . Their case joined Brown v. Board of Education at the Supreme Court, which rejected the doctrine of " separate but equal " in 1954. The segregationist establishment, led by Senator Harry F. Byrd and his Byrd Organization , reacted with
16236-935: The Tutelo , who spoke Siouan , to the west. In response to threats from these other groups to their trade network, thirty or so Virginia Algonquian -speaking tribes consolidated during the 1570s under Wahunsenacawh, known in English as Chief Powhatan . Powhatan controlled more than 150 settlements that had a total population of around 15,000 in 1607. Three-fourths of the native population in Virginia, however, died from smallpox and other Old World diseases during that century, disrupting their oral traditions and complicating research into earlier periods. Additionally, many primary sources, including those that mention Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas , were created by Europeans, who may have held biases or misunderstood native social structures and customs. Several European expeditions, including
16482-555: The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard the case and ruled against the Browns, relying on the precedent of Plessy and its "separate but equal" doctrine. The Browns, represented by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall , appealed the ruling directly to the Supreme Court. In May 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Browns. The Court ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," and therefore laws that impose them violate
16728-411: The United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains . The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach . Its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County , part of Northern Virginia , where slightly over a third of Virginia's population of 8.7 million live. Eastern Virginia is part of the Atlantic Plain , and the Middle Peninsula forms
16974-552: The Virginia big-eared bat , the state mammal . The Virginia opossum is the only marsupial native to the United States and Canada, and the native Appalachian cottontail was recognized in 1992 as a distinct species of rabbit, one of three found in the state. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises have been recorded in Virginia's coastal waters, with bottlenose dolphins being the most frequent aquatic mammals . Virginia's bird fauna comprises 422 counted species, of which 359 are regularly occurring and 214 have bred in Virginia, while
17220-500: The breeding of slaves , often through rape, a profitable business. Slaves in the Richmond area were also forced into industrial jobs, including mining and shipbuilding. The failed slave uprisings of Gabriel Prosser in 1800, George Boxley in 1815, and Nat Turner in 1831, however, marked the growing resistance to slavery. Afraid of further uprisings, Virginia's government in the 1830s encouraged free Blacks to migrate to Liberia . On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown led
17466-431: The class divide by disenfranchising and restricting the movement of indentured servants, who made up around eighty percent of the workforce. On the colony's frontier, tribes like the Tutelo and Doeg were being squeezed by Seneca raiders from the north, leading to more confrontations with colonists. In 1676, several hundred working-class followers of Nathaniel Bacon , upset by Berkeley's refusal to retaliate against
17712-601: The headright system tried to solve this by granting colonists farmland for their help attracting indentured servants . Enslaved Africans were first sold in Virginia in 1619. Though other Africans arrived as indentured servants and could be freed after four to seven years, the basis for lifelong slavery was developed in legal cases like those of John Punch in 1640 and John Casor in 1655. Laws passed in Jamestown defined slavery as race-based in 1661, as inherited maternally in 1662, and as enforceable by death in 1669. From
17958-679: The siege of Yorktown . His surrender on October 19, 1781, led to peace negotiations in Paris and secured the independence of the colonies. Virginians were instrumental in writing the United States Constitution : James Madison drafted the Virginia Plan in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1789. Virginia ratified the Constitution on June 25, 1788. The three-fifths compromise ensured that Virginia, with its large number of slaves, initially had
18204-542: The state fish . Downhill in the Piedmont, stripeback darter and Roanoke bass become common, as do swampfish , bluespotted sunfish , and pirate perch in the Tidewater . The Chesapeake Bay hosts clams, oysters, and 350 species of saltwater and estuarine fish , including the bay's most abundant finfish, the Bay anchovy , as well as the invasive blue catfish . An estimated 317 million Chesapeake blue crabs live in
18450-467: The " Little Rock Nine " after the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School . President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by asserting federal control over the Arkansas National Guard and deploying troops from the U.S. Army 's 101st Airborne Division stationed at Fort Campbell to ensure the black students could safely register for and attend classes. Also in 1957, Florida's response
18696-545: The "Virgin Queen" or that they viewed the land as being untouched) or related to an Algonquin phrase, Wingandacoa or Windgancon , or leader's name, Wingina , as heard by the expedition. The name initially applied to the entire coastal region from South Carolina in the south to Maine in the north, along with the island of Bermuda . Raleigh's colony failed, but the potential financial and strategic gains still captivated many English policymakers. In 1606, King James I issued
18942-499: The 15 Southside legislators on the Gray Commission voted for the Stanley plan. Of the 12 commissioners who voted against the Stanley plan, two were from Arlington County, two were from Richmond, and one was from Norfolk. At the end of the session, Arlington's State Senator Charles R. Fenwick and delegate C. Harrison Mann proposed a series of bills designed to harass the Virginia NAACP, which Fenwick and others believed had instigated
19188-441: The 1930s to over one million by the 2010s. Native carnivorans include black bears , who have a population of around five to six thousand in the state, as well as bobcats , coyotes , both gray and red foxes , raccoons , weasels and skunks . Rodents include groundhogs , nutria , beavers , both gray squirrels and fox squirrels , chipmunks, and Allegheny woodrats , while the seventeen bat species include brown bats and
19434-416: The 2022–2023 winter season. Climate change in Virginia is leading to higher temperatures year-round as well as more heavy rain and flooding events. Urban heat islands can be found in many Virginia cities and suburbs, particularly in neighborhoods linked to historic redlining . The air in Virginia has statistically improved since 1998. The closure and conversion of coal power plants in Virginia and
19680-567: The 60 years preceding the Brown case, race relations in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation . Such state policies had been endorsed by the United States Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which held that as long as the separate facilities for separate races were equal, state segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment 's Equal Protection Clause ("no State shall ... deny to any person ...
19926-540: The Appalachian Mountains can lead to significant snowfalls across the state, such as the January 2016 blizzard , which created the state's highest recorded one-day snowfall of 36.6 inches (93 cm) near Bluemont . On average, cities in Virginia can receive between 5.8–12.3 inches (15–31 cm) of snow annually, but recent winters have seen below-average snowfalls, and much of Virginia had no measurable snow during
20172-542: The Assembly adjourned sine die . Governor Stanley signed the school segregation and legal business bills into law on September 29, 1956. The funding cut-off bill and legal business bills went into effect immediately, while the remaining school segregation bills took effect 90 days later. Virginia Virginia , officially the Commonwealth of Virginia , is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of
20418-828: The Black population was reduced by the Great Migration to northern industrial cities in the first half of the 20th century, since 1965 there has been a reverse migration of Blacks returning south . The Commonwealth has the highest number of Black-white interracial marriages in the US , and 8.2% of Virginians describe themselves as multiracial . More recent immigration since the late 20th century has resulted in new communities of Hispanics and Asians. As of 2020 , 10.5% of Virginia's total population describe themselves as Hispanic or Latino , and 8.8% as Asian . The state's Hispanic population rose by 92% from 2000 to 2010, with two-thirds of Hispanics in
20664-643: The Boothe-Dalton plan provided for an administrative appeal process, which the Gray Commission plan did not. It also identified a very specific, time-consuming process for assignment appeals (to the local school board, the state board of education, state circuit courts, state supreme court, and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court). Finally, it contained a "local option" that would allow racial integration in public schools "where localities are ready" (according to Boothe). The Mann-Fenwick plan, sponsored by Arlington Delegate C. Harrison Mann and Senator Charles R. Fenwick ,
20910-411: The Boothe-Dalton plan was in how it differed from the Gray Commission student assignment plan. The Gray Commission plan assigned students on the basis of student welfare, availability of facilities and transportation, health, and aptitude, whereas the Boothe-Dalton plan expanded the list of factors to include school attendance areas, academic background, student personality, and student needs. Additionally,
21156-506: The Census Bureau recognizes several hundred unincorporated communities . Over three million people, 35% of Virginians, live in the twenty jurisdictions collectively defined as Northern Virginia , part of the larger Washington metropolitan area and the Northeast megalopolis . Fairfax County , with more than 1.1 million residents, is Virginia's most populous jurisdiction, and has
21402-521: The Civil War, the Commonwealth was deeply in debt, and in the late 1870s redirected money from public schools to pay bondholders. The Readjuster Party formed in 1877 and won legislative power in 1879 by uniting Black and white Virginians behind a shared opposition to debt payments and the perceived plantation elites . The Readjusters focused on building up schools, like Virginia Tech and Virginia State , and successfully forced West Virginia to share in
21648-447: The Court's decision in Brown , but most white Southerners decried it. Many white Southerners viewed Brown as "a day of catastrophe—a Black Monday —a day something like Pearl Harbor ." In the face of entrenched Southern opposition, progress on integrating American schools was slow. The American political historian Robert G. McCloskey described: The reaction of the white South to this judicial onslaught on its institutions
21894-527: The Court's opinion in Brown made no reference to these considerations of foreign policy, there is no doubt that they significantly influenced the decision." In spring 1953, the court heard the case, but was unable to decide the issue and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953, with special attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks. The court reargued
22140-493: The District of Kansas . The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children. The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. The Topeka Board of Education operated separate elementary schools due to a 1879 Kansas law, which permitted (but did not require) districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and white students in 12 communities with populations over 15,000. The plaintiffs had been recruited by
22386-406: The Fourteenth Amendment did give the necessary authority and were pushing to go ahead. Warren, who held only a recess appointment , held his tongue until the Senate confirmed his appointment. Warren convened a meeting of the justices, and presented to them the simple argument that the only reason to sustain segregation was an honest belief in the inferiority of Negroes. Warren further submitted that
22632-495: The Gray Commission could not come up with any new proposals then he himself would craft bills for the General Assembly to consider. Although no plan was formally agreed upon, the Gray Commission asked its counsel David J. Mays to craft proposals along six lines: 1) Cutting off state funds to any school district which integrated; 2) Allowing local referendums to veto the appropriation of local funds for integration; 3) Repeal of state laws allowing school districts to be sued; 4) Allowing
22878-660: The Gray Commission plan filed 14 bills to implement the Commission's proposals, but the Gray plan's supporters said they would abandon their pupil assignment plan in favor of the Mann-Fenwick pupil assignment plan. Delegate C.W. Cleaton introduced a bill to prohibit school districts from raising private money to operate integrated schools, Senator Eugene Snydor introduced a bill to allow residents to vote on whether integrated schools should be closed and whether closed schools should be reopened as segregated, and Delegate Griffith Purcell introduced
23124-415: The Gray Commission plan) opposed the more extreme segregationists (who believed that public opinion was becoming more and more inflamed against Brown ). Byrd cautioned Virginia state legislators to "go slow" (a now-famous political phrase). Byrd and the other extreme segregationists hoped that public opinion would continue to harden against Brown , allowing political leaders to adopt interposition rather than
23370-417: The Gray Commission plan. The two sides began to fight over whether to delay a year before passing any new school legislation. Moderate segregationists began to worry that public education would be destroyed by tuition vouchers, and were not willing to implement such a plan even if it meant saving segregation. House Speaker Moore introduced a resolution which would require school districts to remain segregated for
23616-738: The Great Dismal and Nottoway swamps. Other common trees include red spruce, Atlantic white cedar , tulip-poplar , and the flowering dogwood , the state tree and flower . Plants like milkweed , dandelions, daisies, ferns, and Virginia creeper , which is featured on the state flag , are also common. The Thompson Wildlife Area in Fauquier is known for having one of the largest populations of trillium wildflowers in North America. White-tailed deer , one of 75 mammal species found in Virginia, rebounded from an estimated population of as few as 25,000 in
23862-756: The Iroquois, and other allied tribes on both sides. A militia from several British colonies, called the Virginia Regiment , was led by Major George Washington , himself one of the investors in the Ohio Company. In the decade following the French and Indian War , the British Parliament passed new taxes which were deeply unpopular in the colonies, and in the House of Burgesses ; opposition to taxation without representation
24108-455: The Kentucky border and is one of only two inter-state parks in the United States. Sustainable logging is allowed in 26 state forests managed by the Virginia Department of Forestry totaling 71,972 acres (291.3 km ), as is hunting in 44 Wildlife Management Areas run by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources covering over 205,000 acres (829.6 km ). The Chesapeake Bay is not
24354-617: The Lee-Jackson state holiday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the closures violated the state constitution, and a panel of federal judges ruled they violated the U.S. Constitution. In early February 1959, both the Arlington County (also subject to an NAACP lawsuit, and which had lost its elected school board pursuant to other parts of the Stanley Plan) and Norfolk schools desegregated peacefully. Soon, all counties reopened and integrated with
24600-661: The May 23 referendum, armed pro-Confederate groups prevented the casting and counting of votes from areas that opposed secession. Representatives from 27 of these northwestern counties instead began the Wheeling Convention , which organized a government loyal to the Union and led to the separation of West Virginia as a new state. The armies of the Union and Confederacy first met on July 21, 1861, in Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia ,
24846-460: The Nation." During the segregation era, it was common for black schools to have fewer resources and poorer facilities than white schools despite the equality required by the "separate but equal" doctrine. The Brown Court did not address this issue, however, probably because some of the school districts involved in the case had improved their black schools in order to "equalize" them with the quality of
25092-549: The Ohio Valley region has helped cut the amount of particulate matter in Virginia's air in half. Current plans call for 30% of the Commonwealth's electricity to be renewable by 2030 and for all to be carbon-free by 2050. Forests cover 62% of Virginia as of 2021 , of which 80% is considered hardwood forest, meaning that trees are primarily deciduous and broad-leaved . The other 20% is pine, with loblolly and shortleaf pine dominating much of central and eastern Virginia. In
25338-487: The South moved faster, with more 'deliberate speed' in displacing Black educators than it did in desegregating schools." Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd organized a campaign to generate legal obstacles to the implementation of desegregation. In September 1957, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas Army National Guard to block the entry of nine black students, later known as
25584-551: The Southside and numbering no more than 15,000 members, the Defenders proved highly influential in state politics. The crisis over school desegregation worsened throughout 1955. On May 31, 1955, the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (known as Brown II ) ordered that school desegregation occur with "all deliberate speed". Two weeks later, Governor Stanley and the Virginia State Board of Education announced that state policy would be to continue to operate
25830-424: The Southside, was deeply influenced by the strong segregationist sentiments expressed at this meeting. Six days later, Governor Stanley announced he would "use every legal means at my command to continue segregated schools in Virginia." On August 30, 1954, Governor Stanley announced the appointment of a commission, chaired by State Senator Garland Gray, to recommend a legislative response to Brown . Officially titled
26076-580: The Stanley plan. He also said that if it were struck down, the Byrd Organization intended to keep enacting plans to thwart desegregation forever. Testifying against the various segregationist plans were members of the NAACP and several Northern Virginia legislators. As the hearings ended, Delegates Lucas Phillipps and Frank Moncure introduced a bill to bar the Virginia State Board of Education from denying accreditation to any private school because its building did not meet state standards. (Many legislators believed that if
26322-649: The U.S. Census Bureau found that only 0.5% of Virginians were exclusively American Indian or Alaska Native , though 2.1% were in some combination with other ethnicities. The state government has extended recognition to eleven tribes. Seven tribes also have federal recognition. The Pamunkey and Mattaponi have reservations on tributaries of the York River in the Tidewater region . [REDACTED] American Community Survey five-year estimate According to U.S. Census data as of 2022 on Virginia residents aged five and older, 83% (6,805,548) speak English at home as
26568-452: The U.S. Supreme Court and other federal and state courts. The constitutional invalidity of the Stanley plan led new governor of Virginia, J. Lindsay Almond , also a Democrat, to propose "passive resistance" to school integration in 1959. The Supreme Court declared portions of "passive resistance" unconstitutional in 1964 and again in 1968. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , in which
26814-476: The U.S. Supreme Court justices. The 13 plaintiffs were: Oliver Brown, Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie Emmanuel, Marguerite Emerson, Shirley Fleming, Zelma Henderson , Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma Lewis, Iona Richardson, Vivian Scales, and Lucinda Todd. The last surviving plaintiff, Zelma Henderson, died in Topeka, on May 20, 2008, at age 88. The District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, citing
27060-641: The U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson . Judge Walter Huxman wrote the opinion for the three-judge District Court panel, including nine "findings of fact," based on the evidence presented at trial. Although finding number eight stated that segregation in public education has a detrimental effect on negro children, the court denied relief on the ground that the negro and white schools in Topeka were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers. This finding would be specifically cited in
27306-609: The U.S. are under Coles Hill, Virginia . Despite a challenge that reached the U.S. Supreme Court twice , the state has banned its mining since 1982 due to environmental and public health concerns. Virginia has a humid subtropical climate that transitions to humid continental west of the Blue Ridge Mountains . Seasonal extremes vary from average lows of 25 °F (−4 °C) in January to average highs of 86 °F (30 °C) in July. The Atlantic Ocean and Gulf Stream have
27552-472: The United States as of 2020 . El Salvador is the most common foreign country of birth, with India , Mexico , South Korea , the Philippines , and Vietnam as other common birthplaces. The state's most populous racial group, non-Hispanic whites , has declined as a proportion of the population from 76% in 1990 to 58.6% in 2020. Immigrants from Britain and Ireland settled throughout the Commonwealth during
27798-645: The United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills." The brief also quoted a letter by Secretary of State Dean Acheson lamenting that "the United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country." British barrister and parliamentarian Anthony Lester has written that "Although
28044-482: The United States. Virginia has a total area of 42,774.2 square miles (110,784.7 km ), including 3,180.13 square miles (8,236.5 km ) of water, making it the 35th- largest state by area. It is bordered by Maryland and Washington, D.C. to the northeast; by the Atlantic Ocean to the east; by North Carolina to the south; by Tennessee to the southwest; by Kentucky to the west; and by West Virginia to
28290-519: The Virginia General Assembly proposed a new surveying commission in 1871. Representatives from Tennessee preferred to keep the less-straight 1803 line, and in 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for them against Virginia . One result is how the city of Bristol is divided in two between the states. The Chesapeake Bay separates the contiguous portion of the Commonwealth from the two-county peninsula of Virginia's Eastern Shore . The bay
28536-570: The Virginia Public Education Commission, it was more popularly known as the Gray Commission. In October 1954, a pro-segregation group called the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties (widely known as "the Defenders") formed. The Defenders not only demanded that state legislators pledge not to support racial integration, but in June 1955 called for legislation to be enacted which barred state funds from being spent on school desegregation. Although limited primarily to
28782-492: The Virginia constitutional convention voted 39-to-1 to approve the constitutional amendment to permit educational vouchers. Five days later, 96 members of the United States Congress sponsored a resolution (introduced by Senator Byrd) called the " Southern Manifesto ", which denounced the Brown decision and encouraged states to "resist forced integration by any means." But moderate segregationist forces (which supported
29028-409: The actual implementation of school desegregation for years afterward, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971, after numerous local lawsuits and both nonviolent and violent demonstrations. Historians have noted the irony that Greensboro, which had heralded itself as such
29274-619: The area held by the Seneca and their larger Iroquois Nation , and in 1748, a group of wealthy speculators, backed by the British monarchy, formed the Ohio Company to start English settlement and trade in the Ohio Country west of the Appalachian Mountains . France, which claimed this area as part of New France , viewed this as a threat, and in 1754 the French and Indian War engulfed England, France,
29520-699: The army and revolutionary militias. Virginia was the first colony to ratify the Articles of Confederation in December 1777. In April 1780, the capital was moved to Richmond at the urging of Governor Thomas Jefferson, who feared that Williamsburg's coastal location would make it vulnerable to British attack. British forces landed around Portsmouth in October 1780, and soldiers under Benedict Arnold raided Richmond in January 1781. The British army had over seven thousand soldiers and twenty-five warships stationed in Virginia at
29766-413: The assignment of a new pupil to their school (a process designed to give white parents the legal right to protest the assignment of a black student to an all-white school). Governor Stanley opened the Assembly's special session on August 27 by declaring that Virginia faced "the gravest problem since 1865". Stanley said his goal was to have the legislature declare that mixing of races in public schools posed
30012-534: The bay as of 2024 . There are 34 native species of crayfish, like the Big Sandy . Amphibians found in Virginia include the Cumberland Plateau salamander and Eastern hellbender , while the northern watersnake is the most common of the 32 snake species. As of 2019 , roughly 16.2% of land in the Commonwealth is protected by federal, state, and local governments and non-profits. Federal lands account for
30258-553: The beginning of 1781, but General Charles Cornwallis and his superiors were indecisive, and maneuvers by the three thousand soldiers under the Marquis de Lafayette and twenty-nine allied French warships together managed to confine the British to a swampy area of the Virginia Peninsula in September. Around sixteen thousand soldiers under George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau quickly converged there and defeated Cornwallis in
30504-563: The bill to include a local pupil assignment option but failed. The conference bill passed the Virginia House 62-to-37. After three hours of debate late in the evening of September 21, the Virginia Senate defeated the local option amendment 21-to-17. The conference bill passed the Senate by a vote of 22-to-16. (Although the Virginia Senate has 40 seats, there were only 38 senators present at the time. One senator had recently died. One senator
30750-432: The case at the behest of Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter , who used reargument as a stalling tactic, to allow the court to gather a consensus around a Brown opinion that would outlaw segregation. The justices in support of desegregation spent much effort convincing those who initially intended to dissent to join a unanimous opinion. Although the legal effect would be same for a majority rather than unanimous decision, it
30996-644: The case. The brief was unusual in its heavy emphasis on foreign-policy considerations of the Truman administration in a case ostensibly about domestic issues. Of the seven pages covering "the interest of the United States," five focused on the way school segregation hurt the United States in the Cold War competition for the friendship and allegiance of non-white peoples in countries then gaining independence from colonial rule. Attorney General James P. McGranery noted that "the existence of discrimination against minority groups in
31242-529: The cases of Sweatt v. Painter , 339 U.S. 629 (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents , 339 U.S. 637 (1950), suggesting that racial segregation was inherently unequal (at least in some settings), which paved the way for Brown . The plaintiffs in Brown asserted that the system of racial separation in all schools, while masquerading as providing separate but equal treatment of both white and black Americans, instead perpetuated inferior accommodations, services, and treatment for black Americans. Brown
31488-513: The circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of the Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then-existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve
31734-492: The closest neighborhood school in the fall of 1951. They were each refused enrollment and redirected to the segregated schools. The case "Oliver Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" was named after Oliver Brown as a legal strategy to have a man at the head of the roster. The lawyers, and the National Chapter of the NAACP, also felt that having Mr. Brown at the head of the roster would be better received by
31980-520: The colonial period, when roughly three-fourths of immigrants came as indentured servants . The Appalachian mountains and Shenandoah Valley have many settlements that were populated by German and Scotch-Irish immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries, often following the Great Wagon Road . Over ten percent of Virginians have German ancestry as of 2020 . The largest minority group in Virginia are Blacks and African Americans, about one-fifth of
32226-577: The colonial period. Only three other independent cities exist elsewhere in the US. The differences between counties and cities in Virginia are small and have to do with how each assess new taxes, whether a referendum is necessary to issue bonds, and with the application of Dillon's Rule , which limits the authority of cities and counties to countermand acts expressly allowed by the General Assembly . Counties can also have incorporated towns , and while there are no further administrative subdivisions ,
32472-499: The colony's start, residents agitated for greater local control, and in 1619, certain male colonists began electing representatives to an assembly, later called the House of Burgesses , that negotiated issues with the governing council appointed by the London Company. Unhappy with this arrangement, the monarchy revoked the company's charter and began directly naming governors and Council members in 1624. In 1635, colonists arrested
32718-570: The coming 1956–1957 school year while the legislature worked on a legislative end-run of Brown . But state Attorney General J. Lindsay Almond argued the bill left the state legally exposed, and advocated instead a special session of the legislature in the summer in order to meet the " good faith " requirement of the Brown II decision. The Moore resolution was defeated, as was the Gray Commission's proposal to allow local school boards to assign students to schools on factors other than race. Three days before
32964-512: The concentration of independent cities in the Tidewater region is that several rural counties there re-incorporated as cities or consolidated with existing cities to try to hold on to their new suburban neighborhoods that started booming in the 1950s , since cities like Norfolk and Portsmouth were able to annex land from adjoining counties until a moratorium in 1987. Others, like Poquoson , became cities to try to preserve racial segregation during
33210-498: The control of the Virginia Assembly; 2) Authorize the Virginia State Board of Education to operate the schools in the name of the Assembly; 3) Make all local and county school personnel employees of the Assembly; 4) Bar lawsuits against local school districts unless initiated by the state Attorney General; 5) Require that a school district be immediately taken over by the Assembly if any current school district or school board member
33456-470: The county either had to leave the county to receive any education between 1959 and 1963, or received no education. All private schools in the region remained racially segregated. This lasted until 1964, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Prince Edward County's decision to provide tuition grants for private schools that only admitted whites violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, in
33702-448: The court must overrule Plessy to maintain its legitimacy as an institution of liberty, and it must do so unanimously to avoid massive Southern resistance. He began to build a unanimous opinion. Although most justices were immediately convinced, Warren spent some time after this famous speech convincing everyone to sign onto the opinion. Justice Jackson dropped his concurrence and Reed finally decided to drop his dissent. The final decision
33948-473: The daughter of local black resident Oliver Brown at the school closest to their home, instead requiring her to ride a bus to a segregated black school farther away. The Browns and twelve other local black families in similar situations filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. federal court against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging its segregation policy was unconstitutional. A special three-judge court of
34194-409: The desegregation era of the 1970s. The 2020 census found the state resident population was 8,631,393, a 7.9% increase since the 2010 census . Another 23,149 Virginians live overseas, giving the state a total population of 8,654,542. Virginia has the fourth-largest overseas population of U.S. states due to its federal employees and military personnel. The fertility rate in Virginia as of 2020
34440-403: The desegregation lawsuits. After the meeting, Governor Stanley told the press that his plan would make Virginia school systems immune to any integrationist litigation. The onus of school closures, he said, would be on African Americans who "force themselves into a school of another race". In the days before the start of the special session, it became clear that a major battle was brewing between
34686-515: The district court judge in Gebhart ordered that the black students be admitted to the white high school due to the substantial harm of segregation and the differences that made the separate schools unequal. Under the leadership of Walter Reuther , the United Auto Workers donated $ 75,000 to help pay for the NAACP's efforts at the Supreme Court. The NAACP's chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall —who
34932-526: The eastern edge is the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, where over 1.7 million reside across six counties and nine cities, including the Commonwealth's three most populous independent cities: Virginia Beach , Chesapeake , and Norfolk . Neighboring Suffolk , which includes a portion of the Great Dismal Swamp , is the largest city by area at 429.1 square miles (1,111 km ). One reason for
35178-536: The education of Southern black children was "almost nonexistent", to the point that in some Southern states the education of black people was forbidden by law. The Court contrasted this with the situation in 1954: "Today, education is perhaps the most important function of our local and state governments." The Court concluded that, in making its ruling, it would have to "consider public education in light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout
35424-494: The end of slavery across the country. The seizure of Fort Sumter by Confederate forces on April 14, 1861, prompted Lincoln to call for a federal army of 75,000 men from state militias . The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 voted on April 17 to secede on the condition it was approved in a referendum the next month. The convention voted to join the Confederacy, which named Richmond its capital on May 20. During
35670-856: The enrollment of two black students in what became known as the " Stand in the Schoolhouse Door " incident. Wallace sought to uphold his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" promise he had given in his 1963 inaugural address. Wallace moved aside only when confronted by General Henry V. Graham of the Alabama National Guard , whom President John F. Kennedy had ordered to intervene. Native American communities were also heavily impacted by segregation laws with native children also being prohibited from attending white institutions. Native American children considered light-complexioned were allowed to ride school buses to previously all white schools, while dark-skinned Native children from
35916-416: The entire legislature). No action was taken on these proposals at the Gray Commission's meeting on June 4. With discussions on a legislative program at a standstill, on June 11 Gray called together the seven members of the Gray Commission most in favor of "massive resistance." They agreed to support a legislative program in favor of "massive resistance" and met with Governor Stanley that night. Stanley said he
36162-414: The equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court did not close with an order to implement the integration of the schools of the various jurisdictions. Instead, it requested the parties re-appear before the Court the following Term to hold arguments on what the appropriate remedy should be. This became the case known as Brown II , described below. Americans mostly cheered
36408-482: The equal protection of the laws"). Racial segregation in education varied widely from the 17 states that required racial segregation to the 16 in which it was prohibited. Beginning in the 1930s, a legal strategy was pursued, led by scholars at Howard University and activists at the NAACP , that sought to undermine states' public education segregation by first focusing on the graduate school setting. This led to success in
36654-399: The exception of Prince Edward County that took the extreme step of choosing not to appropriate any funding for its school system, thus forcing all its public schools to close, although Prince Edward County provided tuition grants for all students, regardless of their race, to use for private, nonsectarian education. Since no private schools existed for blacks within the county, black children in
36900-468: The facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as " separate but equal ". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown , and its related cases, paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement , and a model for many future impact litigation cases. The case began in 1951 when the public school system in Topeka, Kansas , refused to enroll
37146-403: The first of several invasions into Union territory. During the next three years of war, more battles were fought in Virginia than anywhere else, including the battles of Fredericksburg , Chancellorsville , Spotsylvania , and the concluding Battle of Appomattox Court House , where Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865. Virginia was formally restored to the United States in 1870, due to the work of
37392-530: The former governor of Virginia who was now president of the University of Virginia , announced he opposed the Stanley plan and supported the Gray Commission's original proposals. By the time the special session resumed on September 4, the number of bills filed for consideration by the Assembly had risen to more than 70. Stanley's supporters led off the debate in both chambers of the Assembly, but Stanley's political position had weakened and media observers felt that he
37638-452: The goal became automatic cut-off. The revised Stanley plan was presented to the Gray Commission on August 22. The Commission reconsidered its own proposals as well as the Stanley plan and those of other legislators (such as the Boothe-Dalton and McCue plans; see below for descriptions). Before the vote, Governor Stanley said he would not insist on the provision in the funding cut-off bill which would deny funds to all public schools statewide if
37884-510: The governor stated. The first was the funds withholding provision. But he pointed out that his plan (which had now been modified even further since late August) would cut off funds only to portions of school districts. (For example, if an elementary school in a district integrated, the legislation would require funds to be cut off to all elementary schools in that district—but not to secondary schools.) He also noted that this portion of his legislative program would expire on June 30, 1958. Stanley said
38130-518: The governor. A conference committee to reconcile the two different bills collapsed. A second conference committee won House members' approval of the three-member statewide pupil assignment committee, while Senate members agreed to allow appeals to go directly to the governor before heading to state courts. When the conference bill came onto the House and Senate floors, legislators from districts under court order to integrate and legislators from districts with small African American populations tried to amend
38376-456: The group's many public statements supporting local control of schools, Tuck later remarked that the purpose of the plan was to prevent integration anywhere in Virginia: "If they [other Virginia areas] won't stand with us then I say make 'em. We cannot compromise. ... If you ever let them integrate anywhere the whole state will be integrated in a short time." Byrd in particular was a vocal supporter of
38622-694: The growing plantation economy, but also fueled conflicts both inside and outside the colony. Virginians fought for the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution , and helped establish the new national government. During the American Civil War , the state government in Richmond joined the Confederacy , while many northwestern counties remained loyal to the Union , which led to
38868-626: The issue and make recommendations. The commission recommended giving localities "broad discretion" in meeting the new judicial requirements. However, in 1956, a special session of the Virginia legislature adopted a legislative package which allowed the governor to simply close all schools under desegregation orders from federal courts. In early 1958, newly elected Governor J. Lindsay Almond closed public schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Warren County rather than comply with desegregation orders, leaving 10,000 children without schools despite efforts of various parent groups. However, he reconsidered when on
39114-401: The justices joined. The Court's opinion began by discussing whether the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, was meant to abolish segregation in public education. The Court said that it had been unable to reach a conclusion on the question, even after hearing a second round of oral arguments from the parties' lawyers specifically on the historical sources. Reargument was largely devoted to
39360-446: The lack of support focused on whether the plan would actually pass court muster as well as halt desegregation. Delegate James McIlhany Thomson , an ardent segregationist, said he believed the Stanley plan would not pass without a pupil assignment program. But on August 24, Garland Gray (whose own position had moved rightward) abandoned support for the pupil assignment plan because it permitted limited integration. Governor Stanley, however,
39606-459: The land on Virginia's islands, which include Tangier Island in the bay and Chincoteague , one of 23 barrier islands on the Atlantic coast. The Tidewater is a coastal plain between the Atlantic coast and the fall line . It includes the Eastern Shore and major estuaries of Chesapeake Bay. The Piedmont is a series of sedimentary and igneous rock -based foothills east of the mountains. The region, known for its heavy clay soil, includes
39852-466: The largest bloc in the House of Representatives . Together with the Virginia dynasty of presidents, this gave the Commonwealth national importance. Virginia is called the "Mother of States" because of its role in being carved into states such as Kentucky , and for the numbers of American pioneers born in Virginia. Between 1790 and 1860, the number of slaves in Virginia rose from around 290 thousand to over 490 thousand, roughly one-third of
40098-440: The late afternoon and evenings between April and September. These months are also the most common for tornadoes , eight of which touched down in the Commonwealth in 2023. Hurricanes and tropical storms can occur from August to October. The deadliest natural disaster in Virginia was Hurricane Camille , which killed over 150 people in 1969 mainly in inland Nelson County . Between December and March, cold-air damming caused by
40344-410: The lawsuit by a childhood friend, Charles Scott. Brown's daughter Linda Carol Brown , a third grader, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary , her segregated black school one mile (1.6 km) away, while Sumner Elementary , a white school, was seven blocks from her house. As directed by the NAACP leadership, the parents each attempted to enroll their children in
40590-402: The leadership of the Topeka NAACP . Notable among the Topeka NAACP leaders were the chairman McKinley Burnett ; Charles Scott, one of three serving as legal counsel for the chapter; and Lucinda Todd . The named African-American plaintiff, Oliver Brown , was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad , as well as an assistant pastor at his local church. He was convinced to join
40836-459: The legislature adjourned, Governor Stanley proposed a plan to deny state funds to any school district which integrated. But this plan was also defeated. The legislative session ended on March 12, 1956. Although calls for a special session of the legislature had been made in February and March, Governor Stanley was not initially receptive to the idea at the beginning of April. In mid-April, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Gi Stevens urged Stanley to call
41082-459: The legislature demanded that the Assembly support interposition, and a resolution to adopt the legal theory as state policy passed on February 1, 1956. On February 25, Byrd called for " massive resistance " by Southern states against the Brown ruling. But a fracture in the pro-segregation movement prevented much legislation from moving forward during the remainder of the regular legislative session. Hopes were initially high when, on March 6, 1956,
41328-437: The legislature should pass before any special session was called. On June 4, the Gray Commission again reported to the governor that it had not been able to improve on its November proposals, but it, too, advised the governor to call a special session of the legislature. The following day, Governor Stanley announced he would call the legislature into special session in late August. Governor Stanley's reversal of position regarding
41574-432: The lynching of Negroes?" Douglas later wrote that he had learned from his travels that "the attitude of the United States toward its colored minorities is a powerful factor in our relations with India." Chief Justice Earl Warren , nominated to the Supreme Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower , echoed Douglas's concerns in a 1954 speech to the American Bar Association , proclaiming that "Our American system like all others
41820-471: The main text of the opinion—to several psychological studies concluding that segregating black children made them feel inferior and interfered with their learning. These studies included those of Kenneth and Mamie Clark , whose experiments in the 1940s had suggested that black American children from segregated environments preferred white dolls over black dolls . The Court then concluded its relatively short opinion by declaring that segregated public education
42066-643: The majority, with thirty National Park Service units, such as Great Falls Park and the Appalachian Trail , and one national park, Shenandoah . Almost forty percent of Shenandoah's total 199,173 acres (806 km ) area has been designated as wilderness under the National Wilderness Preservation System . The U.S. Forest Service administers the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests , which cover more than 1.6 million acres (6,500 km ) within Virginia's mountains, and continue into West Virginia and Kentucky . The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge also extends into North Carolina, as does
42312-544: The middle of the 20th century, are the focus of conservation efforts in the state and a reintroduction program in Shenandoah National Park . Virginia has 226 species of freshwater fish from 25 families, a diversity attributable to the area's varied and humid climate, topography, interconnected river system, and lack of Pleistocene glaciers . Common examples on the Cumberland Plateau and higher-elevation regions include Eastern blacknose dace , sculpin , smallmouth bass , redhorse sucker , Kanawha darter , and brook trout ,
42558-679: The moderate segregationists and the extreme segregationists. Delegates from Northern Virginia openly opposed the Stanley plan as well as calls for even more radical legislation. Although most moderate segregationists had joined with the extremists in initially supporting the Gray Commission plan and the call for a constitutional convention, the moderates largely did not support interposition. The moderate segregationists also joined with many (such as leading educators, urban leaders from Northern Virginia, former state superintendent of public schools Dabney Lancaster, several General Assembly delegates, and Gray Commission vice chairman Harry B. Davis) who felt that
42804-424: The mouth of the Chesapeake Bay . Central Virginia lies predominantly in the Piedmont , the foothill region of the Blue Ridge Mountains , which cross the western and southwestern parts of the state. The fertile Shenandoah Valley fosters the state's most productive agricultural counties, while the economy in Northern Virginia is driven by technology companies and U.S. federal government agencies. Hampton Roads
43050-430: The negative vote. The board also voted to publicly support the original Gray Commission plan. Meeting with the board after the vote, Governor Stanley discussed the possibility of merging his plan with some sort of pupil assignment plan, so that pupil assignment would be permitted but funds would still be withheld if assignment failed to segregate the schools. Another blow to the Stanley plan came when Colgate W. Darden Jr. ,
43296-419: The next nine years. When Medgar Evers sued in 1963 to desegregate schools in Jackson, Mississippi , White Citizens Council member Byron De La Beckwith murdered him. Two subsequent trials resulted in hung juries. Beckwith was not convicted of the murder until 1994. In June 1963, Alabama governor George Wallace personally blocked the door to the University of Alabama 's Foster Auditorium to prevent
43542-403: The north and drifted an additional 3.5 miles by the border's westernmost point . After Tennessee joined the U.S. in 1796, new surveyors worked in 1802 and 1803 to reset their border with Virginia as a line from the summit of White Top Mountain to the top of Tri-State Peak in the Cumberland Mountains . However, deviations in that border were identified when it was re-marked in 1856, and
43788-404: The northwest. That Virginia's boundary with Maryland and Washington, D.C. only extends to the low-water mark of the south shore of the Potomac River has been an issue for water rights over the years. . Virginia's southern border was defined in 1665 as 36°30' north latitude . Surveyors marking the border with North Carolina in the 18th century however started about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) to
44034-436: The only case of the five originating from a student protest, began when 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns organized and led a 450-student walkout of Moton High School . The Gebhart case was the only one where a trial court, affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court , found that discrimination was unlawful; in all the other cases the plaintiffs had lost as the original courts had found discrimination to be lawful. The Kansas case
44280-506: The pages of the Richmond News Leader in favor of interposition. In near-record numbers, Virginia voters turned out on January 9 to approve the call for a constitutional convention by a 2-to-1 margin. After the referendum, Kilpatrick and now Byrd, too, began pressing for an even stronger legislative response, based on the constitutional justification of interposition. The Virginia General Assembly opened its 60-day legislative session on January 11, 1956. Almost immediately, Byrd's supporters in
44526-430: The past eight months that there should be no mixing of the races anywhere in the state. Fifty-eight bills about school desegregation were filed for consideration by the Virginia Assembly. The administration immediately entered into negotiations to amend the Stanley plan to allow parents to sue a school district to force it to accept state funds (and resegregate). The Boothe-Dalton and McCue plans were also filed. Backers of
44772-464: The plan was a "local option," both the school board and the local pupil assignment board would need to adopt a pupil assignment plan, or state funds would be cut off. A cut-off could be avoided if 10% of the school district's voters signed a petition calling for a referendum, and voters approved implementation of a pupil assignment plan (a process intended to allow voters to bypass an integrationist school board). Local communities were also permitted to drop
45018-461: The population. Virginia was a major destination of the Atlantic slave trade . The Igbo ethnic group of what is now southern Nigeria were the largest African group among slaves in Virginia. Blacks in Virginia also have more European ancestry than those in other southern states, and DNA analysis shows many have asymmetrical male and female ancestry from before the Civil War, evidence of European fathers and African or Native American mothers. Though
45264-498: The pre-war debt. But in 1883, they were divided by a proposed repeal of anti-miscegenation laws , and days before that year's election, a riot in Danville , involving armed policemen, left four Black men and one white man dead. These events motivated a push by white supremacists to seize political power through voter suppression , and segregationists in the Democratic Party won the legislature that year and maintained control for decades. They passed Jim Crow laws that established
45510-405: The presence of Confederate monuments in Virginia have also led to large demonstrations, including in August 2017, when a white supremacist drove his car into protesters , killing one, and in June 2020, when protests that were part of the larger Black Lives Matter movement brought about the removal of Confederate statues . Virginia is located in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of
45756-424: The press that Judge Bryan's decision left open the possibility of implementing a pupil assignment plan that would be neutral on its face but which could keep schools segregated. Mays, Lapsley, Almond, Wickham, and Boatwright spent August 6 engaged in additional legislative drafting. That same day, Governor Stanley withdrew his school funding bill from consideration by the drafting committee and asked that Almond draft
46002-429: The problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The Court said the question was complicated by the major social and governmental changes that had taken place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It observed that public schools had been uncommon in the American South in the late 1860s. At that time, Southern white children whose families could afford schooling usually attended private schools, while
46248-431: The proposals contained in the Gray Commission report as well as the governor's recommendations. Mays spent most of July 31 drafting this legislation with four others: Almond; Mays' associate Henry T. Wickham; Commission staffer John B. Boatwright Jr.; and George McIver "Mack" Lapsley (Director of the Division of Statutory Research and Drafting for the General Assembly). They considered a number of different ways to implement
46494-430: The proposals recommended by the Gray Commission, with the exception of the pupil assignment provision. The governor also sought an amendment to state law authorizing and directing the governor to withhold state funding from any public school district when the "public interest, or safety, or welfare" required it. The plan would also permit a local school district to close its public schools (in which case every child would get
46740-473: The public schools closed, "white academies" would spring up to offer segregated private education. These schools, however, would be forced to occupy buildings which did not meet state educational codes, and the Phillipps-Moncure bill was intended to solve this problem.) By September 9, however, it was clear that the Stanley plan was only holding onto a minority of legislative voters. On September 10, Delegate C. Harrison Mann introduced 16 bills aimed at curbing
46986-435: The pupil assignment plan if 25% of school district voters signed a petition calling for a referendum on the issue and voters approved the referendum. Debate over the competing proposals in the House began on September 17, and was highly contentious. The House subsequently passed the governor's latest proposal. In the Senate, however, the governor's proposal was amended to establish a statewide pupil assignment board appointed by
47232-448: The pupil assignment plan, and decided to bring the various alternatives before the Gray Commission. Wickham was given the task of putting into legislative language the decisions the group made. That same day, Judge Bryan ordered Arlington County public schools desegregated. Mays told the drafting group that Bryan's decision invited a pupil assignment program and suggested it might pass constitutional muster. Almond agreed, and on August 1 told
47478-406: The question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? In answer, the Court held that it did. The Court ruled that state-mandated segregation, even if implemented in schools of otherwise equal quality,
47724-563: The racial integration of public schools in Arlington County, Virginia . The rulings sparked additional lawsuits against segregated school districts across Virginia. The rulings also widened the split in the pro-segregation forces, with the more extremist supporters now arguing that the Gray Commission proposals were no longer an option and that only "massive resistance" and a plan implementing interposition were supportable. Governor Stanley released his legislative proposal to implement "massive resistance" on July 23, 1956, and set August 27, 1956, as
47970-577: The resolve of several key figures, especially Byrd." On June 18, 1954, political leaders in Virginia's Southside (a collection of counties in the south-central region of the state) met and agreed to ask for vigorous state opposition to Brown . They began calling themselves the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Civil Liberties, and members included U.S. Congressmen William Munford Tuck and Watkins Abbitt as well as state senators Charles T. Moses and Garland Gray . They selected Farmville businessman Robert B. Crawford as their president. Stanley, himself from
48216-469: The rest are mostly winter residents or transients . Water birds include sandpipers, wood ducks, and Virginia rail , while common inland examples include warblers, woodpeckers, and cardinals, the state bird . Birds of prey include osprey, broad-winged hawks , and barred owls . There are no endemic bird species. Audubon recognizes 21 Important Bird Areas in the state. Peregrine falcons , whose numbers dramatically declined due to DDT poisoning in
48462-434: The same band were still barred from riding the same buses. Tribal leaders, having learned about Martin Luther King Jr. 's desegregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, contacted him for assistance. King promptly responded to the tribal leaders and through his intervention the problem was quickly resolved. In North Carolina, there was often a strategy of nominally accepting Brown , but tacitly resisting it. On May 18, 1954,
48708-483: The school closing proposal, and helped draft the other proposals in the plan. The Stanley plan had the support of the more extreme segregationists in Virginia as well. The first week of July, the Defenders promoted a plan that would withdraw the legal basis for lawsuits against school districts, permit state takeovers of school districts which integrated, and deny state funds to school districts which integrated. The Defenders opposed any pupil assignment plan as too moderate
48954-441: The second major provision of his program was the tuition grant plan, offered to parents in districts where schools closed. (Unpublicized by the governor was a provision in his tuition grant plan that would require school districts which lost state funds to provide tuition grants.) All legislators should get behind this legislative program for massive resistance, Stanley concluded, because all Virginians of all races had concluded over
49200-503: The separation of West Virginia in 1863. Although the state was under one-party rule for nearly a century following the Reconstruction era , both major political parties have been competitive in Virginia since the repeal of Jim Crow laws in the 1970s. Virginia's state legislature is the Virginia General Assembly , which was established in July 1619, making it the oldest current law-making body in North America . Unlike other states, cities and counties in Virginia function as equals, but
49446-410: The southwest and Mexico by the end of the period. Palisaded towns began to be built around 1200. The native population in the current boundaries of Virginia reached around 50,000 in the 1500s. Large groups in the area at that time included the Algonquian in the Tidewater region , which they referred to as Tsenacommacah , the Iroquoian -speaking Nottoway and Meherrin to the north and south, and
49692-445: The special session seemed inexplicable, especially in light of the lack of new legislative proposals, but events had transpired which had changed his mind. In part, Stanley himself had come around to the "massive resistance" viewpoint. Various court decisions of the previous spring had convinced him that the federal courts (and the federal government) would not compromise on the issue of segregation. Additionally, Stanley felt emboldened by
49938-400: The start of the General Assembly's special session. He made it clear that he would not permit desegregation. "There shall be no mixing of the races in the public schools, anywhere in Virginia," he said on July 23. The Stanley plan split the Executive Committee of the Gray Commission. Attorney General Almond (not a Byrd Organization insider and privately already seeking the governorship) drafted
50184-511: The state constitution be amended to permit education vouchers to be given to those parents who did not want their children attending integrated schools, or to those children who lived in counties where public schools had been abolished. Second, the Commission advised amending state education law to permit local school boards to assign students to schools on the basis of factors (such as aptitude, availability of facilities, health, and transportation needs) other than race. Stanley proposed enacting all
50430-476: The state government manages most local roads. It is also the only state where governors are prohibited from serving consecutive terms. Nomadic hunters are estimated to have arrived in Virginia around 17,000 years ago. Evidence from Daugherty's Cave shows it was regularly used as a rock shelter by 9,800 years ago. During the late Woodland period (500–1000 CE ), tribes coalesced, and farming, first of corn and squash, began, with beans and tobacco arriving from
50676-407: The state in general, and the effectiveness of racial legislation. The committee was to issue a report and make recommendations (if any) to the Assembly by November 1, 1957. Due to the number of last-minute changes and the lateness of the hour during the final votes, the Assembly held a "cleaning up" day on Saturday, September 22, to make technical clarifications to the final bills. After this session,
50922-564: The state living in Northern Virginia . Northern Virginia also has a significant population of Vietnamese Americans , whose major wave of immigration followed the Vietnam War . Korean Americans have migrated there more recently, while about 45,000 Filipino Americans have settled in the Hampton Roads area. Tribal membership in Virginia is complicated by the legacy of the state's " pencil genocide " of intentionally categorizing Native Americans and Blacks together, and many tribal members do have African or European ancestry, or both. In 2020,
51168-532: The state population, and the number of slave owners rose to over 50 thousand. Both of these numbers represented the most in the U.S. The boom in Southern cotton production using cotton gins increased the amount of labor needed for harvesting raw cotton , but new federal laws prohibited the importation of slaves. Decades of monoculture tobacco farming had also degraded Virginia's agricultural productivity . Virginia plantations increasingly turned to exporting slaves , which broke up countless families and made
51414-421: The state than moving to it in 2021. This is largely credited to high home prices in Northern Virginia, which are driving residents there to relocate south; Raleigh is their top destination. Aside from Virginia, the top birth state for Virginians is New York , with the Northeast accounting for the largest number of domestic migrants into the state by region. About twelve percent of residents were born outside
51660-418: The state to invoke its police power to prevent integration (under the assumption that integration would lead to public unrest and disorder); 5) Enacting a pupil assignment plan to be implemented solely by the governor (under the assumption that no court would jail the governor); and 6) Enacting a pupil assignment plan to be implemented solely by the General Assembly (under the assumption that no court would jail
51906-517: The state's public schools on a segregated basis. Then, in a seemingly unrelated case, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled on November 7, 1955, in Almond v. Day that providing state funds to private schools violated Article 141 of the state constitution . (In 1954, the Virginia General Assembly had enacted legislation providing educational vouchers to underage dependents of veterans who were wounded or had died in World War II). Kilpatrick and several Virginia political leaders had supported vouchers as
52152-451: The subsequent Supreme Court opinion of this case. The case of Brown v. Board of Education as heard before the Supreme Court combined five cases: Brown itself, Briggs v. Elliott (filed in South Carolina ), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia ), Gebhart v. Belton (filed in Delaware ), and Bolling v. Sharpe (filed in Washington, D.C. ). All were NAACP-sponsored cases. The Davis case,
52398-544: The time, it was estimated that 125,000 pupil assignments were made each year in the state.) Another legislative package was introduced by State Senators Armistead Boothe and Ted Dalton . The Boothe-Dalton plan was less ambitious in scope. It proposed a plan in which: 1) Student school assignments would be made on factors other than race; 2) Parents unhappy with their child's school assignment would have access to an administrative appeals system; and 3) Teachers could transfer schools only as conditions warranted. The key element of
52644-432: The tribes, burned Jamestown. Bacon's Rebellion forced the signing of Bacon's Laws , which restored some of the colony's rights and sanctioned both attacks on native tribes and the enslavement of their people. The Treaty of 1677 further reduced the independence of the tribes that signed it, and aided the colony's assimilation of their land in the years that followed. Colonists in the 1700s were pushing westward into
52890-553: The tuition grant proposal. There was intense pressure on Stanley to make good on his concession of August 14. In a closed-door meeting with Assembly delegates attending the 1956 Democratic National Convention , Stanley again insisted on the authority to withhold state funds from any school district which integrated. But Delegate Delamater Davis of Norfolk (the state's largest city) said his city would likely operate its schools without state funds if ordered to integrate. By mid-August, 18 local school districts had placed their budgets on
53136-441: The tuition voucher proposal would undermine public education. Many state legislators also seemed unsure about whether to support the Stanley plan. A press poll of the state House Appropriations Committee showed an 8-to-7 split against the plan, with two members undecided. Support for Stanley's plan came almost exclusively from the Southside and counties around it, the Tidewater counties , and portions of Southwest Virginia . Much of
53382-415: The two sets of schools [were] comparable." The lower court observed that "colored children in many instances are required to travel much greater distances than they would be required to travel could they attend a white school" but also noted that the school district "transports colored children to and from school free of charge" and that "no such service [was] provided to white children." In the Delaware case
53628-413: The unanimous court held that separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. Although agitation for an end to racial segregation in schools (and society at large) had been building in the United States since the end of World War II, Brown sparked the modern American civil rights movement . The initial reaction of most Virginia politicians and newspapers to the Brown decision
53874-483: The western and mountainous parts of the Commonwealth, oak and hickory are most common, while lower altitudes are more likely to have small but dense stands of hemlocks and mosses in abundance. Spongy moth infestations in oak trees and the blight in chestnut trees have decreased both of their numbers, leaving more room for hickory and the invasive tree of heaven . In the lowland tidewater and Piedmont , yellow pines tend to dominate, with bald cypress wetland forests in
54120-449: The white schools. This prevented the Court from finding a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause in "measurable inequalities" between all white and black schools and forced the Court to look to the effects of segregation itself. The Court therefore framed the case around the more general question of whether the principle of "separate but equal" was constitutional when applied to public education. We come then to
54366-540: Was "noisy and stubborn", especially in the Deep South where racial segregation was deeply entrenched in society. Many Southern governmental and political leaders embraced a plan known as " massive resistance ", created by Senator Harry F. Byrd , in order to frustrate attempts to force them to de-segregate their school systems. Four years later, in the case of Cooper v. Aaron , the Court reaffirmed its ruling in Brown , and explicitly stated that state officials and legislators had no power to nullify its ruling. For much of
54612-419: Was 55.8 per 1,000 females between the ages of 15 and 44, and the median age as of 2021 was the same as the national average of 38.8 years old. The geographic center of population is located northwest of Richmond in Hanover County , as of 2020 . Though still growing naturally as births outnumber deaths, Virginia has had a negative net migration rate since 2013, with 8,995 more people leaving
54858-405: Was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson , which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as
55104-455: Was a third major proposal. Their plan established a three-member "School Assignment Board" in each school district whose members would be appointed by the governor. The plan adopted the assignment factors listed by the Gray Commission, but also borrowed language from Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (which some legislators felt would help the statute pass court scrutiny). The Mann-Fenwick plan also permitted any parent to protest
55350-455: Was adamant that the Assembly enact his legislative program implementing "massive resistance." "If we accept admission of one Negro child into a white school, it's all over," he said on August 24. The Stanley plan was not the only segregationist legislative package introduced at the special session of the Assembly. On July 31, Charlottesville State Senator E.O. McCue offered his own proposal. The McCue plan would: 1) Place all public schools under
55596-413: Was close to compromising even further on his program. On September 6, Stanley's backers introduced a new bill in the Assembly which would give the governor the power to make pupil assignments. The new bill expanded on the limited criteria previously proposed by the governor by declaring that pupil assignment would be made in order to ensure "efficient" (e.g., segegrated) operation of the schools and to reduce
55842-503: Was felt that dissent could be used by segregation supporters as a legitimizing counter-argument. Conference notes and draft decisions illustrate the division of opinions before the decision was issued. Justices William O. Douglas , Hugo Black , Harold Hitz Burton , and Sherman Minton were predisposed to overturn Plessy . Fred M. Vinson noted that Congress had not adopted desegregation legislation; Stanley F. Reed discussed incomplete cultural assimilation and states' rights , and
56088-485: Was forced to integrate (although no one seemed able to find this provision in his newly introduced bills). Attorney General Almond voiced his opinion that the new plan would not stop integrationist lawsuits, and that making the governor an agent of the legislature was clearly unconstitutional. When Speaker Moore later in the day proposed a pupil assignment plan that did not permit local integration, Stanley abandoned his new plan and supported Moore's proposal. Stanley suffered
56334-400: Was formed from the drowned river valley of the ancient Susquehanna River . Many of Virginia's rivers flow into the Chesapeake Bay, including the Potomac , Rappahannock , York , and James , which create three peninsulas in the bay, traditionally referred to as "necks" named Northern Neck , Middle Peninsula , and the Virginia Peninsula from north to south. Sea level rise has eroded
56580-412: Was going against the Byrd Organization, which believed that public opinion would become even more extreme during the summer and give the organization greater political capital and freedom of movement. There had also been changes agreed in the legislative approach which had occurred behind closed doors. The Gray Commission's public claim on May 28 that it had nothing new to report was not truthful. In fact,
56826-412: Was ill but ready to leave the hospital and cast a deciding vote against the Stanley plan if needed.) The final vote was not taken until 2:00 AM on September 22, and the Virginia Assembly adjourned at 2:30 AM. Among the bills passed in the final hours of the session were six "legal business" bills designed to curb the NAACP. They were significantly amended in committee to meet the constitutional concerns of
57072-432: Was inclined to the view that segregation worked to the benefit of the African-American community; Tom C. Clark wrote that "we had led the states on to think segregation is OK and we should let them work it out." Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson disapproved of segregation, but were also opposed to judicial activism and expressed concerns about the proposed decision's enforceability. Chief Justice Vinson had been
57318-412: Was influenced by UNESCO 's 1950 Statement, signed by a wide variety of internationally renowned scholars, titled The Race Question . This declaration denounced previous attempts at scientifically justifying racism as well as morally condemning racism. Another work that the Supreme Court cited was Gunnar Myrdal 's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Myrdal had been
57564-425: Was inherently unequal, violated the Equal Protection Clause, and therefore was unconstitutional: We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of
57810-408: Was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967—argued the case before the Supreme Court for the plaintiffs. Assistant attorney general Paul Wilson—later distinguished emeritus professor of law at the University of Kansas —conducted the state's ambivalent defense in his first appellate argument. In December 1952, the Justice Department filed an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief in
58056-506: Was led by Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee , among others. Virginians began to coordinate their actions with other colonies in 1773 and sent delegates to the Continental Congress the following year. After the House of Burgesses was dissolved in 1774 by the royal governor , Virginia's revolutionary leaders continued to govern via the Virginia Conventions . On May 15, 1776, the Convention declared Virginia's independence and adopted George Mason 's Virginia Declaration of Rights , which
58302-423: Was mixed. Its legislature passed an Interposition Resolution denouncing the decision and declaring it null and void. But Florida Governor LeRoy Collins , though joining in the protest against the court decision, refused to sign it, arguing that the attempt to overturn the ruling must be done by legal methods. In Mississippi , fear of violence prevented any plaintiff from bringing a school desegregation suit for
58548-472: Was noisy and stubborn. Certain "border states," which had formerly maintained segregated school systems, did integrate, and others permitted the token admission of a few Negro students to schools that had once been racially unmixed. However, the Deep South made no moves to obey the judicial command, and in some districts there can be no doubt that the Desegregation decision hardened resistance to integration proposals. In Virginia, Senator Harry F. Byrd organized
58794-432: Was responsible for "stirring up" litigation to integrate the public schools. The plan was enacted by the Virginia Assembly on September 22, 1956, and signed into law by Governor Stanley on September 29. A federal court struck down a portion of the Stanley plan as unconstitutional in January 1957. By 1960, nearly all of the major elements of the plan (including the litigation curbs aimed at the NAACP) had been struck down by
59040-636: Was responsible for building 38 warships for the U.S. Navy between 1907 and 1923. During World War I , German submarines attacked ships outside the port, which was a major site for transportation of soldiers and supplies. After the war, a homecoming parade to honor African-American troops was attacked in July 1919 by the city's police as part of a renewed white-supremacy movement, known as Red Summer . The shipyard continued building warships in World War II , and quadrupled its pre-war labor force to 70,000 by 1943. The Radford Arsenal outside Blacksburg also employed 22,000 workers making explosives, while
59286-423: Was restrained. From the 1920s to the late 1960s, Virginia politics had been dominated by the Byrd Organization , a political machine led by Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. , another segregationist Democrat (who was also a former governor of Virginia). Top leaders in the Byrd Organization, such as Governor Thomas B. Stanley and then– Attorney General J. Lindsay Almond , were also at first reserved in their reaction to
59532-402: Was then included in a new constitution that designated Virginia as a commonwealth . Another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson , drew upon Mason's work in drafting the national Declaration of Independence . After the American Revolutionary War began, George Washington was selected by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia to head the Continental Army , and many Virginians joined
59778-452: Was unanimous. Warren drafted the basic opinion and kept circulating and revising it until he had an opinion endorsed by all the members of the court. Reed was the last holdout and reportedly cried during the reading of the opinion. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Brown family and the other plaintiffs. The decision consists of a single opinion written by chief justice Earl Warren , which all
60024-411: Was unique among the group in that there was no contention of gross inferiority of the segregated schools' physical plant, curriculum, or staff. The district court found substantial equality as to all such factors. The lower court, in its opinion, noted that, in Topeka, "the physical facilities, the curricula, courses of study, qualification and quality of teachers, as well as other educational facilities in
60270-475: Was upheld, and SCOTUS declined to hear a further appeal. Virginia had one of the companion cases in Brown , involving the Prince Edward County schools. Significant opposition to the Brown verdict included U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd , who led the Byrd Organization and promised a strategy of Massive Resistance . Governor Thomas Stanley , a member of the Byrd Organization, appointed the Gray Commission , 32 Democrats led by state senator Garland Gray , to study
60516-452: Was willing "to go to any extreme that may be necessary to prevent integration anywhere in Virginia." The basic legislative proposals of the "Stanley plan," The Washington Post reported, were worked out at a secret meeting on July 2 in the United States House Committee on Rules hearing room in the United States Capitol . At the meeting were Abbitt, Byrd, Gray, Smith, Tuck, Stanley, and seven Southside state legislators. The group agreed to
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