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on how best to aecommmodate the U. S. Supreme Court’s desegregation decision.
In Washington, Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr. was furious. He never spoke to Almond again. Back in Richmond, Byrd Jr., Godwin and their allies planned a desperate rear-guard action to hold off the coming of integration, which they earnestly believed would spell the end of public education in Virginia.
When the Perrow Commission made its report, it recommended that each locality be given “freedom of choice,” or local option on the integration question. This was acceptable to Almond, and it became the centerpiece of his legislative program to begin the integration of the schools. The problem now became one of getting this program through the General Assembly.
Almond was convinced he had the support of narrow majorities in both the Senate and the House of Delegates. The stumbling block, however, was the Senate Education Committee which normally would have to clear such legislation and that committee was dominated by Byrd loyalists. Almond knew they would kill any bills coming before them which veered in the slightest from Byrd’s no-compromise stance.
Lt. Gov. A.E.S. Stephens came to Almond's rescue. He upheld a motion that the Senate take the highly unusual step of going into “a committee of the whole.” Under this procedure, the entire Senate, rather than the Education Committee, would consider the Perrow package.
The ruling was immediately appealed by the outraged segregationist faction, and an early tally indicated the vote on a motion to uphold Stephens’ ruling was a 19-19 tie. In such a case, the motion to uphold would fail for want of a majority. Stephens’ ruling would thus be overturned, and the integration measures would go to the Education Committee where certain death awaited them.
One of the two absent senators was Stuart Carter. He was hospitalized in Roanoke where he had recently undergone major abdominal surgery.
When Carter heard of what was happening, and of the tie vote in the Senate, he ordered that he be discharged from the hospital. While his doctors protested, he was taken to the Roanoke airport and flown to Richmond. As his astonished colleagues looked on, he was carried into the Senate Chamber on a stretcher where he cast his historic vote to sustain the Stephens ruling, thus, in effect, crushing Massive Resistance.
Shortly thereafter both Houses of the legislature narrowly passed the Perrow recommendations.
Carter’s vote was an act of personal and political courage which has few equals in the annals of Virginia's government, and, of course, it ended his political career in the Byrd dominated Old Dominion.
It s a pity that, on the occasion of his passing, more was not done to honor Stuart Carter. He was. by anybody’s definition, a man of conviction, towering integrity and, on the day of his stunning Senate vote, a certifiable hero.
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