Byrd machine facts for kids

The Byrd machine, also called the Byrd organization, was a powerful political group in Virginia led by former Governor and U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd (1887–1966). This group, part of the Democratic Party, controlled Virginia politics for most of the 20th century. From the 1890s until the late 1960s, the Byrd organization held power through a network of local officials in most counties. These officials were known as "courthouse cliques."

Harry F. Byrd Sr. in the 1930s

The organization was strongest in rural areas. It never gained much power in Virginia's growing cities or among the new middle-class families after World War II. Senator Byrd strongly opposed racial integration in public schools. His policy of "massive resistance" tried to stop integration, but it failed in 1960 when courts ruled it unconstitutional. This was a major blow to the organization, though it continued for a few more years.

When Senator Byrd retired in 1965, his son Harry F. Byrd Jr. took his place in the United States Senate. However, the Byrd organization's most powerful days were over. In 1969, a Republican governor was elected in Virginia for the first time in the 20th century. This election marked the end of 80 years of control by conservative Democrats in Virginia politics.

How it Started

After the American Civil War, Virginia's politics were very disorganized. At first, former Confederate soldiers could not vote. New Black voters joined the political scene. In the late 1870s, a group formed called the Readjuster Party. This group included Black voters, Republicans, and some Democrats. They wanted to challenge the power of the wealthy planter class who had controlled Virginia since colonial times. They also wanted to improve public education.

The Readjuster Party lost power in the late 1880s. Then, John S. Barbour Jr. led a new Conservative Democrat political group in Virginia. This was known as the Martin organization. They were helped by a poll tax put in place in 1902. This tax made it hard for Black people and poor white people to vote. After Barbour died, U.S. Senator Thomas Staples Martin took over. But his control was weak by the time he died in 1919.

Around this time, a young state senator from Winchester, Harry F. Byrd, was becoming very important in state politics. He had helped the Wilson Administration during World War I by volunteering with gasoline rationing.

In 1922, Byrd became well-known across the state. He had seven years of experience in the Virginia State Senate. He challenged powerful groups that built highways in Virginia. Byrd had learned a lot about roads from managing the Valley Turnpike. In the Virginia General Assembly, he fought against using borrowed money to pay for new roads. He worried that the state would be stuck paying off debt for many years.

In 1923, a group of highway contractors sued Byrd for saying their actions "may be very detrimental" to the state. The court dismissed the lawsuit, saying his criticism was legal. This public attention helped Harry Byrd get elected to statewide office.

How it Worked

Since the 1890s, the Virginia Democratic machine believed in limiting who could vote. They also supported balanced budgets and low taxes. After the Constitution of 1902 made it harder for more than half the voters to cast ballots, the organization easily won most elections in Virginia.

Harry Byrd's uncle, U.S. Congressman Hal Flood, was a leader in the organization until he died in 1921. Byrd's father, Richard Evelyn Byrd Sr., had been the speaker of the House of Delegates. But Harry Byrd's own skills helped him become governor in 1925 at age 38. He was smart and paid close attention to details. He quickly took control of the organization, which was already 30 years old. He served as governor until 1930. Then, he was elected to the United States Senate in 1933 and served there until he retired in 1965.

For over forty years, Byrd built strong connections with the "courthouse cliques." These were elected officials in every county. The five main elected officials in each county were the sheriff, Commonwealth's attorney, clerk of the court, county treasurer, and commissioner of revenue.

The "clerk of the court" position, though not very public, held the most power in most counties within the Byrd organization. These local groups suggested good candidates for office. Byrd would only decide on candidates after careful talks with them. Without Byrd's approval, no candidate had a chance to win a statewide election in Virginia.

Changes to the State Rules

One of Byrd's first actions as governor was to change the state constitution. He reduced the number of statewide elected offices to just three: governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. Another change required the legislature to redraw its districts every ten years. This change gave more power to the governor. It also made it harder for opposing groups to form.

Several rules that existed before Byrd's time also helped him stay in power. The most important was the poll tax. This tax made it very hard for Black people and poor white people to vote. It made Virginia's voting population the smallest compared to its total population in the post-Civil War United States. The local "courthouse cliques" of the Byrd machine made sure that "reliable" voters paid their poll taxes on time, sometimes even three years before an election.

The state legislature, through circuit court judges, controlled the groups that decided who was allowed to vote. The organization never gained much power in cities. However, they deliberately drew voting districts to favor rural Southside Virginia. This gave rural areas more power than cities and other parts of the state. This unfair system helped the Byrd organization win statewide elections.

Money Matters

Byrd made property taxes the responsibility of only counties and cities. He was also very interested in improving roads. He greatly increased funding for secondary roads. When that wasn't enough, he passed the Byrd Road Act of 1932. This law created the state's Virginia Secondary Roads System. It made the state responsible for maintaining county roads. However, it did not give similar help to Virginia's independent cities. At first glance, these actions made Byrd seem like a modern leader.

However, Byrd's money policy was based on strict conservatism. He reorganized state government to make it more efficient and use tax money better. Byrd's main support came from rural voters in his home area, the Shenandoah Valley, and Southside. Voters in these areas cared less about improved state services (except roads) and more about low taxes and limited government.

Byrd started a "pay as you go" approach to spending. This meant no state money was spent until enough taxes and fees were collected. This kept Virginia from having to pay off road construction debt. It also made Virginia one of the few states that stayed financially stable during the early years of the Great Depression. But it also meant that funding for higher education and other state services remained very low.

Byrd, like many Americans who grew up before the idea of high school for everyone, never graduated from high school. He knew that people in his rural areas often left school after eighth grade to work on farms. They were less interested in state services like public education and more interested in lower taxes. Rural areas had too many representatives in the General Assembly. This meant Virginia spent some of the lowest amounts per person on education and social welfare in the nation for decades.

Professor William Grymes of George Mason University noted that Byrd's political power came from officials being able to limit the number of voters. They also made sure those few voters supported the Byrd organization. Because of these efforts to limit voters, candidates supported by Byrd could win with as little as fifteen percent of the possible voters actually casting a ballot.

Fighting Federal Laws

With this system in place, Byrd's organization chose almost every governor from 1930 until 1970. This happened even as Virginia became more friendly to Republicans. Many Virginia Democrats started to move away from the national Democratic Party. This was because Franklin D. Roosevelt supported labor unions during the New Deal. This trend grew even faster during the Civil Rights Movement. Byrd even wrote the Southern Manifesto, which opposed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Because of this, many Byrd Democrats started voting for different parties in national elections as early as the 1930s. This was long before it became common across the South in the 1960s. This trend was especially strong in western Virginia, Byrd's home region. Some counties there have not voted for a Democrat for president since Roosevelt.

Byrd became a leader of the "conservative coalition" in the United States Senate. He opposed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and largely blocked most new liberal laws after 1937. Byrd strongly opposed racial desegregation even early in the New Deal. Later, he opposed Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy. He also opposed losing Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson II. He opposed them because they were against racial segregation in the U.S. military and federal government jobs. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats controlled the General Assembly until the mid-1990s.

Some Byrd Democrats, like Governors John S. Battle and Thomas B. Stanley, realized that racial integration was going to happen. They were willing to take small steps to end Jim Crow laws. However, their efforts were stopped in 1954. This happened a little over a month after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Byrd promised to block any attempts to integrate Virginia's public schools.

Byrd announced a policy of "massive resistance" to integrating the state's public schools. He said this was because of laws against mixed-race marriages, like Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924. Virginia's other Senator, A. Willis Robertson, and most other members of the organization joined him. Byrd had a powerful friend in the United States House of Representatives. This was Howard W. Smith, who was chairman of the House Rules Committee. He stopped many civil rights bills from even being voted on. Governor Stanley, along with Byrd and Garland Gray, a powerful leader in the Virginia Senate, created the Virginia Public Education Commission. This group, known as the Gray Commission, wrote laws called the Stanley Plan to carry out the "massive resistance" program announced in 1956.

In January 1959, Virginia's school-closing law was ruled unconstitutional. The General Assembly then ended the law that required children to attend school. They made it a local choice for counties and cities to operate public schools. When journalist Edward R. Murrow showed a TV program called "The Lost Class of '59" on CBS, it caused anger across the nation. The program showed how the organization's "massive resistance" had closed public schools in several Virginia areas.

State and federal courts struck down most of the "massive resistance" laws by 1960. In response, Governor Stanley's successor, J. Lindsay Almond Jr., wrote several laws. These laws started a very slow process of desegregation, called "passive resistance." Most members of the organization thought "passive resistance" was wrong because it gave up on white supremacy. However, in 1968, the federal Supreme Court said this was not enough in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. By then, continuing to fight integration was almost pointless. This was because Virginia's law against mixed-race marriages, which Byrd had used to justify "massive resistance," was overturned in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia. Also by this time, white people in Virginia areas with many Black residents had largely left public schools for private segregation academies. Or they moved from Richmond and other inner cities to new suburbs just outside the city limits. This was known as white flight.

Even before then, the failure of "massive resistance" made some Byrd Democrats realize that segregation could not last forever. For example, in 1963, the Prince Edward County school board hesitated to reopen schools after four years. Governor Albertis S. Harrison told the board members to follow a court order to reopen or face legal action. Earlier, Harrison had defended "massive resistance" as attorney general.

Some Byrd Democrats, like Governor Mills Godwin, tried to get Black voters to support them. Godwin had been a leader of "massive resistance" as a state senator. However, while serving as lieutenant governor from 1962 to 1966, he campaigned for Lyndon Johnson for president. During that time, he tried to win over Black voters before his own run for governor in 1965. In that campaign, Godwin won the support of the Virginia NAACP. However, Byrd, Robertson, Smith, Gray, and a few others continued to oppose any form of integration.

The End of the Machine

Harry F. Byrd Sr. retired from the U.S. Senate in 1965. His oldest son, Harry Jr., who was a State Senator, was chosen to take his place.

Harry Sr. died in 1966. Shortly before his death, the Byrd organization started to show weaknesses. Two of Harry Sr.'s long-time allies lost in the Democratic primary elections to more liberal challengers. Senator Robertson, who had served for 20 years, was defeated by State Senator William B. Spong Jr.. President Lyndon B. Johnson had personally asked Spong to challenge Robertson. Johnson was angry because Robertson opposed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Also, Congressman Smith was defeated by State Delegate George Rawlings. Harry Jr. himself barely won his primary election for the rest of his father's term. While Spong and Harry Jr. won in November, Rawlings lost to conservative Republican William L. Scott. Scott gained the support of many conservative Democrats.

A series of Supreme Court rulings forced state legislatures to follow the "one man, one vote" rule. This rule meant that voting districts had to have roughly equal populations. This ended the advantage that rural areas had, which was the main source of the Byrd organization's power.

The Byrd organization finally broke down in 1969. A split in the Democratic Party allowed A. Linwood Holton Jr. to become Virginia's first Republican governor since Reconstruction. A year later, Republicans won six of the state's ten congressional districts. This was the first time Republicans held a majority of Virginia's congressional seats since Reconstruction. One of the districts that turned Republican was the Byrds' home district.

Holton was followed in 1974 by Godwin. Godwin was a former Byrd organization Democrat who had become a Republican. (Godwin had served a term as governor from 1966-1970 as a Democrat. He was the last Byrd organization member to hold the state's top office.) Meanwhile, even though the organization ended, Harry Byrd Jr. stayed in the U.S. Senate until he retired in 1983. He left the Democratic Party in 1970 and called himself an Independent Democrat.

What Was Left Behind

The Byrd organization's response to federal orders to desegregate schools in the 1950s had a lasting impact on Virginia. "Massive Resistance" hurt Virginia in many ways. It made race relations worse. It convinced Black people that white politicians would not treat them fairly. It made them believe that courts were the only part of government they could trust. By making an impossible promise to keep segregation, despite federal court orders, the Byrd organization appealed to the worst feelings in white voters. When state leaders failed to stop integration, it made white citizens doubt all political promises.

"Massive Resistance" also stopped Virginia from improving public education. Money and attention were taken away from the state's underfunded public schools and given to private segregation academies. It also hurt economic development in Virginia. National companies became unwilling to move to a state that, by the 1960s, was seen as old-fashioned by much of the nation because of its Jim Crow laws. The segregationist talk from Byrd, Robertson, and Smith in Washington, and other Democrats in state government like Governor Almond, who seemed not to value public education, further damaged the state's image.

The Byrd machine's ability to oversee 11 successful governor elections and administrations over 44 years was unmatched by other Southern Democratic political groups.

See also

• Joel Broyhill
• Pendergast organization
• Robert Young Button