. . . . it kept us from having any influence on what was going on down there because in the House for instance, and the same way in the Senate, they had the committees stacked. Now, I had gotten on good committees the very first time I went down there before they knew that I might not go along with them a hundred percent, so they wouldn’t change the committees and I ended up as Chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee my last year there. But it wasn’t until Gov. Almond [J. Lindsay Almond, Jr.] changed his position on massive resistance that they opened up the broom closets and a bunch of us came out that had been suppressed, and so we were in a position then to help carry that fight to eliminate massive resistance at least officially in the state, and we got it done.
So that’s really probably about the only place where we really made a positive gain. We accomplished that. But it wouldn’t have been done if there hadn’t been some old line conservatives who saw the light of day. Perrow [State Senator Mosby G. Perrow, Jr.], for instance, he had been an organization stalwart but I think his father had been a superintendent of schools, maybe, over in Lynchburg and he just could not in good conscience go along with shutting schools down or keeping them shut down, and there were several others like that. Tayloe Murphy, Sr., for instance, had been treasurer of Virginia when Colgate Darden was governor and just a wonderful man, but very conservative. Well he prayed over this and I know he talked to Dr. Dabney Lancaster, you know, and he went along with breaking it up. Well it was a terrible—. I was talking to his son not long ago about that, about his father, how I admired the way that he had stood fast at a time when it was very difficult for him to do it. He said, “Yes, he said he lost a good many lifelong friends that he never recovered.” Well that’s what happened.