Harry Byrd of Virginia

Harry Byrd of Virginia PDF Author: Ronald L. Heinemann
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813923819
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
This is the first full-scale biography of Harry Byrd Sr., one of the most influential politicians of this century. His fascinating career as Virginia governor, U.S. senator, and leader of the Virginia Democratic Party enabled him to touch every important event and meet every significant political figure from the Great Depression to the Great Society. Heinemann gives us the full story of Byrd's rise to power.

Harry Byrd of Virginia

Harry Byrd of Virginia PDF Author: Ronald L. Heinemann
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813923819
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
This is the first full-scale biography of Harry Byrd Sr., one of the most influential politicians of this century. His fascinating career as Virginia governor, U.S. senator, and leader of the Virginia Democratic Party enabled him to touch every important event and meet every significant political figure from the Great Depression to the Great Society. Heinemann gives us the full story of Byrd's rise to power.

Harry Byrd of Virginia

Harry Byrd of Virginia PDF Author: Ronald L. Heinemann
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813916422
Category : Governors
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description
Harry Byrd, Sr., was a rarity in American politics. His career as governor of Virginia, leader of the Virginia Democratic party, and a U.S. senator for more than thirty years enabled him to touch every important event and meet every significant political figure from the Great Depression to the Great Society. Best known for his advocacy of balanced budgets and his criticism of big government, Byrd influenced national legislation through his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee. He was also a leader in efforts to prevent desegregation of the South. An architect of massive resistance, Byrd espoused an ideology that often put him on a collision course with the onrushing twentieth century. Byrd had the longest and most influential career of any Virginian of this century. Through his control over nominations for state and national office and his imposition of conservative economic and social doctrines on the state, he left an indelible mark. This first full-scale biography of Harry Byrd will provide insight into the operation of state and national politics, the nature of political leadership, and the motives behind political action.

The Byrds of Virginia

The Byrds of Virginia PDF Author: Alden Hatch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
The Byrds of Virginia are among the most powerful and influential families in this country--and are also one of the oldest. The first Byrd ("William I") settled in Virginia in 1670 and was the founder of the Byrd dynasty that is vigorously represented today by Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. Now, eminent author Alden Hatch, with style, wit and extraordinary scholarship, traces the history of the Byrds from 1670 to the present in one of the most engrossing and important biographies of an American family to appear in many years. -- Front book flap

We Happy WASPs

We Happy WASPs PDF Author: Parke Rouse
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780875170916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description


Keep On Keeping On

Keep On Keeping On PDF Author: Brian J. Daugherity
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813938902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Virginia was a battleground state in the struggle to implement Brown v. Board of Education, with one of the South’s largest and strongest NAACP units fighting against a program of noncompliance crafted by the state’s political leaders. Keep On Keeping On offers a detailed examination of how African Americans and the NAACP in Virginia successfully pursued a legal agenda that provided new educational opportunities for the state’s black population in the face of fierce opposition from segregationists and the Democratic Party of Harry F. Byrd Sr. Keep On Keeping On is the first book to offer a comprehensive view of African Americans’ efforts to obtain racial equality in Virginia in the later twentieth century. Brian J. Daugherity considers the relationship between the various levels of the NAACP, the ideas and actions of other African American organizations, and the stances of Virginia’s political leaders, white liberals and moderates, and segregationists. In doing so, the author provides a better understanding of the connections between the actions of white political leaders and those of black civil rights activists working to bring about school desegregation. Blending social, legal, southern, and African American history, this book sheds new light on the civil rights movement and white resistance to civil rights in Virginia and the South.

Son of Virginia

Son of Virginia PDF Author: L. Douglas Wilder
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149301952X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In 1981, the Commonwealth of Virginia, which had been dominated for decades by “the Organization,” a political machine led by former Governor and U.S. Senator Harry Byrd Sr., took its first baby steps to becoming the vibrant state it is today. That year, Charles Robb rejected the machine and began a new Democratic Party in his campaign for governor. Instead of running against African Americans, Robb reached out to Douglas Wilder, the state’s only African American State Senator and other leaders in the African American Community to rally voters of color to support the Democratic ticket. With the help of a heavy African American turnout, Robb won and the Byrd machine was crushed. In 1985, just four years later, Doug Wilder won the party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor against the cries of “Virginia isn’t ready” and, later that year, defied the naysayers by being elected to that office. Within five years, he would be sworn in as the first elected African American governor in American history. SON OF VIRGINIA by L. Douglas Wilder details the events of the author’s life to paint a portrait of the changing face of America. It will be a story of constant struggle and conflict, not only Wilder’s struggle, but also that of courageous people who stood up to decades of discrimination, corruption and greed. The book will stand as a road map for continued American progress in our elections and laws and a stark warning of what may happen if we relax our commitment to this program.

Claude A. Swanson of Virginia

Claude A. Swanson of Virginia PDF Author: Henry C. FerrellJr.
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813162955
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Spanning most of the years of the one-party South, the public career of Virginian Claude A. Swanson, congressman, governor, senator, and secretary of the navy, extended from the second administration of Grover Cleveland into that of Franklin Roosevelt. His record, writes Henry C. Ferrell, Jr., in this definitive biography, is that of "a skillful legislative diplomat and an exceedingly wise executive encompassed in the personality of a professional politician." As a congressman, Swanson abandoned Cleveland's laissez faire doctrines to become the leading Virginia spokesman for William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic platform of 1896. His achievements as a reform governor are equaled by few Virginia chief executives. In the Senate, Swanson worked to advance the programs of Woodrow Wilson. In the 1920s, he contributed to formulation of Democratic alternatives to Republican policies. In Roosevelt's New Deal cabinet, he helped the Navy obtain favorable treatment during a decade of isolation. The warp and woof of local politics are well explicated by Ferrell to furnish insight into personalities and events that first produced, then sustained, Swan-son's electoral success. He examines Virginia educational, moral, and social reforms; disfranchisement movements; racial and class politics; and the impact of the woman's vote. And he records the growth of the Hampton Roads military-industrial complex, which Swanson brought about. In Virginia, Swanson became a dominant political figure, and Ferrell's study challenges previous interpretations of Virginia politics between 1892 and 1932 that pictured a powerful, reactionary Democratic "Organization," directed by Thomas Staples Martin and his successor Harry Flood Byrd, Sr., defeating would-be progressive reformers. A forgotten Virginia emerges here, one that reveals the pervasive role of agrarians in shaping the Old Dominion's politics and priorities.

The Dynamic Dominion

The Dynamic Dominion PDF Author: Frank B. Atkinson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742577538
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
The Dynamic Dominion tells the dramatic story of Virginia's political transformation from the Second World War to the Reagan Revolution. The cradle of American democracy — and thus of the democratic movement that is sweeping the globe today — the venerable Old Dominion has emerged again in the second half of the 20th century as a dynamic political pace setter for the nation. In 1945, Virginia was a one-party, one-faction state under the aristocratic rule of conservative Democratic Senator Harry F. Byrd and his famed 'Byrd organization.' From his perch as the uncontested leader of the state that led the south, Virginia's Byrd became a regional symbol, a congressional kingpin, and a national power. With its political system and culture static, Virginia's voice was heard nationally mostly in dissent, as it had been for a century. Within a few decades, emerging two-party competition and an unprecedented party realignment combined to place the rapidly changing commonwealth in the national vanguard. Well before Republican parties throughout the South became competitive, Virginia's Republicans in the 1970s compiled the most impressive winning streak of any state party in the country. They did it by constructing a coalition of rural conservative Democrats and suburban Republicans — the same coalition that Ronald Reagan assembled nationwide in 1980, ushering in the Reagan Revolution. As told in The Dynamic Dominion, the Virginia story contains all the excitement, drama, conflict, and intrigue of a fast-paced thriller. It is a story of triumph and tragedy, celebrities and statesmen, heroes and scoundrels — of shifting party loyalties and makeshift coalitions, hard-fought campaigns and razor-close elections — of ambition and cynicism alongside sacrifice and idealism. Best of all, the tale is true. It is the fascinating story of contemporary democracy flourishing in Virginia . . . the place where it was born.

Race, Reason, and Massive Resistance

Race, Reason, and Massive Resistance PDF Author: David John Mays
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820330256
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
These private writings by a prominent white southern lawyer offer insight into his state’s embrace of massive white resistance following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. David J. Mays of Richmond, Virginia, was a highly regarded attorney, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, and a member of his city’s political and social elite. He was also a diarist for most of his adult life. This volume comprises diary excerpts from the years 1954 to 1959. For much of this time Mays was counsel to the commission, chaired by state senator Garland Gray, that was charged with formulating Virginia’s response to federal mandates concerning the integration of public schools. Later, Mays was involved in litigation triggered by that response. Mays chronicled the state’s bitter and divisive shift away from the Gray Commission’s proposal that school integration questions be settled at the local level. Instead, Virginia’s arch-segregationists, led by U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd, championed a monolithic defiance of integration at the highest state and federal levels. Many leading Virginians of the time appear in Mays’s diary, along with details of their roles in the battle against desegregation as it was fought in the media, courts, polls, and government back rooms. Mays’s own racial attitudes were hardly progressive; yet his temperament and legal training put a relatively moderate public face on them. As James R. Sweeney notes, Mays’s differences with extremists were about means more than ends--about “not the morality of Jim Crow but the best tactics for defending it.”

The Moderates' Dilemma

The Moderates' Dilemma PDF Author: Matthew D. Lassiter
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813918174
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
In 1958, facing court-ordered integration, Virginia's governor closed public schools in three cities. His action provoked not only the NAACP but also large numbers of white middle-class Virginians who organized to protest school closings. This compilation of essays explores this contentious period in the state's history. Contributors argue that the moderate revolt against conservative resistance to integration reshaped the balance of power in the state but also delayed substantial school desegregation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR