Governor Stanley's Address to the General Assembly, August 27, 1956, and the Voices Not Heard

In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation did not violate the "equal protection of the laws" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Virginia and other southern states employed the doctrine of "separate but equal" to enforce segregation in public places, including schools. Black schools never received equal funding from communities in the commonwealth, and their facilities were inferior. On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that segregation in schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. In fact, the Supreme Court established that separate facilities were "inherently unequal," no matter the state or condition of the segregated school. 

Initially Governor Thomas B. Stanley reacted cautiously to the Supreme Court's ruling, and spoke of his plan to meet with white and Black leaders to determine how to carry out integration in Virginia's schools. However, he succumbed to pressure to resist school integration from U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, white community organizations such as the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, and Richmond News Leader editor James J. Kilpatrick, who publicly argued that the state had a right to "interpose" itself between its citizens and the enforcement of federal laws including Supreme Court decisions.  

On August 27, 1956, Stanley spoke to a special session of the General Assembly. He urged the assembly members to pass legislation that would prevent schools in Virginia from integrating and to include provisions that would remove state funding from any school or school system that attempted to integrate. In this excerpt from his address, Governor Stanley claimed that the responses he received from Virginians from all walks of life unanimously supported the idea that integration should be prevented. However, Virginians who supported integration also wrote to the governor between 1954 and 1956. This group of selected letters to Stanley represent the many voices that were left unheard in his speech.

The General Assembly passed a law that denied state funding to any public schools where Black and white students were taught in the same classroom. Virginia's policy of Massive Resistance resulted in the closure of some public schools that attempted to desegregate. For more than a decade school integration proceeded slowly in Virginia, and some districts ignored court orders until a 1968 Supreme Court ruling required localities to demonstrate actual progress in desegregating their schools.

Citations: 
Governor Thomas B. Stanley Speech Before a Special Session of the Virginia General Assembly, 27 August 1956 (WRVA-160), WRVA Radio Collection, Accession 38210, Library of Virginia. Excerpt is 4 minutes long.

Letters in Governor Thomas B. Stanley Executive Papers, Accession 25184, Box 110 (Integration folders, 1954, 1955, 1956), State Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia.


Related Document Bank entry:
Governor Stanley's Address to Virginians after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education Decision, May 17, 1954

Preview Activity

Looking at Language: Read the letters. What kind of phrases do the writers use to support the Supreme Court ruling? What are the different ways the authors of these letters criticize the governor's decision? What kinds of evidence does each writer use to support their opinion, and how does that evidence reflect the writer's identity?

Post Activities

Listen to the Language: Listen to the language of Governor Stanley’s address to the General Assembly on August 26, 1956. What is he arguing? What is he asking the legislators to do? What support is he claiming to have from the people of Virginia in regards to his requests? Whose voices are you not hearing in his speech?

Take a Stand:  Read the letters from the citizens whose voices are not represented in Governor Stanley’s address to the Virginia Assembly. You have been chosen to represent these people, whose voices have been ignored, before the General Assembly. Create an address that you would deliver to the General Assembly representing the positions of the people who wrote these letters. Use evidence from the letters to support the arguments you present in your address

Food for Thought:  Why do you think Governor Stanley chose not to mention the letters he received supporting school integration when he addressed the General Assembly in 1956?