A Collection of Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr.'s Virginia Law Reports during the Civil Rights Era (1948, 1959-1964)

Albertis Harrison; Harry F. Byrd, Jr.; J. Lindsay Almond

Virginia House of Delegates; Senate; Commonealth: 1948-1964,

[The Politics of Reaction: 11 volumes from the Library of Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. (Association Copy)]  11 volume set.  5 in the Virginia Assembly's buckram law binding. One volume bound in an extremely thick accordion binding with blue boards, with Byrd's handwritten notes on some pages. All bindings in excellent condition.  Byrd's name stamped on two of the volumes, all volumes from Byrd's estate in Winchester, VA.  List of volumes: 1. House Bills & Resolutions 1948; 2. Index of Acts of Assembly 1912-1959; 3. House and Senate Documents: Extra Session 1956, Regular Session 1958; 4. Senate Journal: Extra Session and Documents 1956, Regular Session 1958; 5. Acts of Assembly: Extra Session 1956, Regular Session 1958; 6. House Journal: Extra Session 1959, Regular Session 1960; 7. Acts of Assembly: Extra Session 1959, Regular Session 1960; 8. House and Senate Documents : Extra Session 1959, Extra Session 1960; 9. House Journal of Virginia : Regular Session 1962;  10. Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia : Regular Sessions 1962; 11. House and Senate Documents - Extra Session 1963, Regular Session 1964. <br>   Sen. Harry Flood Byrd Jr. (1914-2013) was an important Virginia politician.  He served in the Virginia Senate from 1948-1965, and as a US Senator from 1965-1982.  Byrd inherited these seats from his father Harry, Sr. who ran the "Byrd Organization," a state political machine that dominated Virginia politics for 40 years.  In the 1950s and early 1960s Byrd and his allies organized "Massive Resistance" to the educational integration rulings of the US Supreme Court in Brown V. Board of Education.  During this period Byrd supported the Stanley Plan, which required the closing of all desegregating schools.  This was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1959, though various closings persisted into 1963.  "If we have failed to prevent integration in the schools of Virginia, it is not because we have not tried.  It is not because we have not invoked every resource known to the institutions of the system under which we live.  It is because we not possess the power to override the supremacy of federal force.  It is because we cannot secure through the Congress legislation limiting the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States.  Many of you have joined with me in pledging to the people of Virginia that no child would be compelled to attend a racially mixed school.  It is the design and purpose of the program recommended to keep inviolate that pledge." - Gov. J. Lindsay Almond, House & Senate, 1959, 10 p.  The Extra Session documents from 1959-1960 significantly contain the Perrow Commission's report.  This Educational Committee was formed in the aftermath of the Harrison v. Day and James v. Almond cases where Virginia was again ordered to desegregate.  In this session the nadir of the Byrd Organization is shown, with delegates splintering over a "local option" and a return to massive resistance to integration.  The final volume contains an extra session that dealt with the defeat of further efforts by the Byrd Organization to block integration and with the Supreme Court's invalidation of the Pole Tax in Butts v. Harrison.  A voluminous collection of the legal attempts of segregationists to block civil rights in Virginia.