<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> After Reconstruction ended following the 1876 Presidential election and the Readjuster Party fell in the 1880s, and continuing into the 1960s, Virginia's conservative Democrats actively worked to maintain legal and cultural racial segregation in Virginia through the Jim Crow laws . To complete white supremacy, after the U.S. Supreme court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Virginia adopted a new constitution in 1902 effectively disenfranchising African Americans through restrictions on voter registration and also requiring racially segregated schools, among other features . </P> <P> In the early 20th century, Harry Flood Byrd (1887--1966), a Democrat, former Governor of Virginia, and the state's senior U.S. Senator after World War II, led what became known as the Byrd Organization . Continuing a legacy of segregationist Democrats, from the mid-1920s until the late 1960s, the Byrd Organization was a political machine which effectively controlled Virginia politics through a network of courthouse cliques of local constitutional officers in most of the state's counties . The Byrd Organization's greatest strength was in the rural areas of the state . It never gained a significant foothold in the independent cities, nor with the emerging suburban middle - class of Virginians after World War II . One of the Byrd Organization's most vocal, though moderate, long - term opponents proved to be Benjamin Muse, who grew up in North Carolina, served as a Democratic state senator from Petersburg, Virginia, then unsuccessfully ran for Governor as a Republican in 1940, served in the U.S. Army, moved to Manassas, Virginia and became a publisher and Washington Post columnist . </P>

The massive resistance speech and the southern manifesto are examples of