Blake Tyler Newton (October 21,1889 – April 30,1977) was a Virginia lawyer,educator and Democratic member of the Senate of Virginia from Hague,Virginia. During the state's Massive Resistance crisis,Newton opposed public school closings,so that when his term expired,he was replaced on the State Board of Education by State Senator Garland Gray,who helped lead the Byrd Organization's opposition to racial desegregation of public schools after the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Brown v. Board of Education. [1]
A native and lifelong resident of Virginia's Northern Neck,Newton was born on October 21,1889,to Edward C. Newton and his wife Lucy Yates Tyler,the next to last of their four sons and two daughters. He attended segregated public schools,and then received bachelor's and master's degrees from the College of William and Mary. [2] In 1956,he received his alma mater's highest alumni award for loyalty and service. [3]
He married Bertha Effingham Lawrence on July 29,1913.
In 1910,Newton began his teaching career at Hamilton High School,and later served as principal of the Blue Ridge Industrial School in St. George,Virginia. Beginning in 1913,he served as school superintendent of Richmond and Westmoreland Counties for 41 years. He replaced 30 one-room schoolhouses (often without plumbing and modern heating) with centralized modern public schools,and established a school bus transportation system so students could attend those facilities,which were often outside walking distance.
Newton was active in Cople Parish,Episcopal Church,the Ruritans,Sons of the American Revolution,Phi Kappa Alpha,Phi Delta Kappa,Phi Beta Kappa,the Northern Neck Bar Association and the Northern Neck Historical Society. Beginning in 1928,he served on the Virginia State Central Democratic Committee.
In 1937,Virginia's General Assembly elected Newton to serve on Virginia's State Board of Education. In 1946,legislators elected him to preside over that body;his 10-year term began the following January. Meanwhile,in 1942,the General Assembly published his "Governor of Virginia as Business Manager." [4]
In 1955,as the Massive Resistance crisis escalated,Newton ran for and was elected (unopposed) to the State Senate from the 29th district. Although unopposed in the general election,he had fierce opposition from the Byrd forces in the Democratic Party primary. Robert O. Norris,Jr. had held the seat since 1946,which had been numbered the 30th district during the previous decade. The Washington Post editorialized that Newton's removal from the State Board of Education retaliated for his vocal opposition to the Byrd Organization's plan to close public schools rather than allow them to be integrated (Newton advocated a "local option" to integrate).
In 1959,Newton proved a crucial member of the 19-member majority assisting Governor J. Lindsay Almond and Lieutenant Governor Gi Stephens in breaking with the Byrd Organization. Unlike the Byrd Organization,Newton supported the national Democratic ticket,including its nominee Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Northern Neck voters reelected Newton to the state Senate (a part-time position) without opposition,but again with fierce Byrd opposition in the Democratic Party primary,in 1959 and 1963,but he retired in 1965 after an adverse reapportionment. His 29th District,renumbered the 28th during the 1960 reapportionment invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Davis v. Mann,was combined with parts of the new 29th District (consisting of Hanover,Essex and Middlesex Counties and other Richmond suburbs to the west of the Northern Neck and held by fellow Democrat Leslie D. Campbell Jr. of Doswell,Virginia),and renumbered the 26th. The new 28th District in the 1965 election was what had been the 31st District,held by fellow Democrat Hunter Andrews. [5]
After his retirement from the state senate,Newton continued to practice law part-time,as well as served as director of the Farmer's Bank of Hague.
Newton survived his wife by five years,dying in Richmond on April 30,1977. He was buried in the family graveyard. In 2001,Westmoreland County named its new library in Hague for Newton. [6] He is mentioned in papers donated to the College of William and Mary's Swem Library by his son,insurance executive and Northern Neck preservationist,Blake T. Newton,Jr. [7]
James Lindsay Almond Jr. was an American lawyer,state and federal judge and Democratic party politician. His political offices included as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 6th congressional district (1946-1948),26th Attorney General of Virginia (1948-1957) and the 58th Governor of Virginia (1958-1962). As a member of the Byrd Organization,Almond initially supported massive resistance to the integration of public schools following the United States Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education,but when Virginia and federal courts ruled segregation unconstitutional,Almond worked with the legislature to end massive resistance.
Julian Sargeant "Sarge" Reynolds of Richmond,Virginia,was an American educator,businessman,and Democratic politician. He served in both the House and Senate of the Virginia General Assembly and served as 30th Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia under Governor Linwood Holton. He died of an inoperable brain tumor at age 34 while in office as Virginia's Lieutenant Governor.
The Byrd machine,or Byrd organization,was a political machine of the Democratic Party led by former Governor and U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd (1887–1966) that dominated Virginia politics for much of the 20th century. From the 1890s until the late 1960s,the Byrd organization effectively controlled the politics of the state through a network of courthouse cliques of local constitutional officers in most of the state's counties.
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James Clinton Turk was a Virginia lawyer,state senator and for more than four decades,United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia.
David John Mays was an American lawyer and writer. He attempted to slow racial desegregation on behalf of Byrd Organization during the Massive Resistance era. Mays served as counsel to the Gray Commission which tried to formulate segregationists' response to the United States Supreme Court rulings in 1954 and 1955 in consolidated cases known as Brown v. Board of Education. He later unsuccessfully defended actions taken against NAACP attorneys and significantly unequal legislative reapportionment. In 2008 the University of Georgia Press published an annotated volume of excerpts of his diaries concerning the early years of Massive Resistance (1954-1959). In 1953,Mays won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803,a biography of the late 18th-century Virginia politician and judge Edmund Pendleton.
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William Francis Stone was Virginia lawyer and member of the Virginia General Assembly representing Martinsville as well as Patrick and Henry Counties between 1954 and 1957,first as a delegate and then elected to a partial senate term in a special 1957 election upon the death of Frank P. Burton. A member of the Byrd Organization,Stone was a member of the Boatwright Committee which investigated the NAACP as part of the Massive Resistance to racial integration vowed by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd after the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education.
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Harry Carter Stuart was a Virginia cattle breeder and trader,who also served as the Democratic State Senator from the 18th District. A lifelong Democrat,Carter helped lead the Byrd Organization's policy of Massive Resistance to racial integration in Virginia's public schools.
Edward Almer Ames Jr. was a Virginia lawyer and member of the Virginia General Assembly representing Virginia's Eastern shore between 1956 and 1968. A member of the Byrd Organization,Ames was also a member of the new legislative Boatwright Committee which investigated the NAACP as part of the Massive Resistance to racial integration vowed by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd after the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education.
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Robert C. Vaden was a Virginia businessman and Democratic member of the Senate of Virginia. Allied with the Byrd Organization,Vaden represented a district centered around Danville part time for three decades. During his last term and in the absence of Virginia's Lieutenant Governors,Vaden led the Virginia senate as its President pro tempore.
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