Stanley Plan
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 that school segregation was unconstitutional. The legislative program was named for Governor Thomas B. Stanley, 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, which many Virginia segregationists believed 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 had been struck down by 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.
Background
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, in which 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 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 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. 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 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 the resolve of several key figures, especially Byrd." On June 18, 1954, political leaders in Virginia's Southside 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 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."
The Gray Commission
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 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 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 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 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 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.. Kilpatrick and several Virginia political leaders had supported vouchers as 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 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 other than race.
Stanley proposed enacting all 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 or opt to not take state funding.
Legislative maneuvering and the rise of "massive resistance"
Governor Stanley called the General Assembly into special session on November 30, 1955, to consider adopting the Gray Commission's report. 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 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 William M. Tuck, Virginia House Speaker E. Blackburn Moore, the Defenders, Kilpatrick, and even Gray himself. For nearly three weeks in late November and early December, Kilpatrick wrote almost daily in 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 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, 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 called the "Southern Manifesto", which denounced the Brown decision and encouraged states to "resist forced integration by any means." But moderate segregationist forces opposed the more extreme segregationists. Byrd cautioned Virginia state legislators to "go slow". Byrd and the other extreme segregationists hoped that public opinion would continue to harden against Brown, allowing political leaders to adopt interposition rather than 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 that there was not enough time to pass 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 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 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.