A Legacy of Innovation: Governors and Public Policy

5. Uneasy Executives: Governors and Civil Rights from the Bay State to the Old Dominion

Chapter 5 Uneasy Executives Governors and Civil Rights from the Bay State to the Old Dominion Jason Sokol The history of American governors almost always appears—in scholarly works, in popular images, and in statistical sketches—as a tale of white men and women. Among more than 2,300 governors of American states, just sixteen have identified themselves as racial minorities. The annals of U.S. history include eight Latino governors, five Asian Americans, and three African Americans—one of whom inherited Louisiana’s statehouse during Reconstruction.1 Only Massachusetts and Virginia have elected African American governors, a pairing of states infused with deep historical irony. From Jamestown and Plymouth to Douglas Wilder and Deval Patrick, Virginia and Massachusetts continue to act as political mirrors. Their colonial experiences remain subjects of constant comparison ; almost every ‘‘Founding Father’’ hails from either Massachusetts or Virginia. In concord or in combat, the two states helped forge the nation: their compromise placed the White House in Washington, D.C., and their leaders assumed prominent roles in the republic-rending debate over slavery. Civil War shrines grace both state capitals. Robert E. Lee’s likeness dominates Richmond’s Monument Avenue while the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial looms over Boston Common. Political observers now speak of Wilder and Patrick in the same breath. The tangled racial pasts of Virginia and Massachusetts paint stunning backdrops behind Wilder’s and Patrick’s elections. While Virginians might cherish tropes about cavalier gentility and Massachusetts residents may fancy themselves the heirs of the abolitionists, both states grappled uneasily with struggles for black civil rights. Both witnessed massive confrontations over school desegregation. Virginians mounted legal obstructions to block African American children from the schoolhouse door, while whites in Boston flung rocks, bricks, and epithets at black students. Uneasy Executives 125 To compare governors’ responses in Virginia and Massachusetts is to probe northern and southern policies side by side. Virginia’s ‘‘massive resisters’’ closed public schools a decade before Governor Linwood Holton counseled citizens to abide busing plans. Massachusetts governors initially supported the Racial Imbalance Act—the state’s pioneering civil rights law—before a grass-roots movement against busing forced Francis Sargent into an uncomfortable evasion. At some moments, the North and South displayed sharp differences, fulfilling their regional stereotypes . Yet Massachusetts and Virginia also illuminated a national convergence on race in the late 1960s and early 1970s—a time characterized by urban riots, spirited opposition to school busing, the ‘‘white backlash ,’’ and a host of racial controversies that thrust governors into burning political fires. In the end, a comparison of Massachusetts and Virginia pictures governors as more than mere responders to the civil rights movement. They shaped its destiny, and in the Bay State and Old Dominion, emerged as products of its triumphs. The specific racial histories of these two states also shed important light on a scholarly debate about black candidates and their prospects in statewide elections.2 Whites in both Virginia and Massachusetts experienced immense crises over integration long before they sent African Americans to the statehouse. In the popular mind, the words ‘‘governors’’ and ‘‘civil rights’’ conjure images of southern politicians who spewed segregationist venom. Orval Faubus gave life to the mob at Little Rock’s Central High School. George Wallace defied the federal government at the University of Alabama , encouraged the violence of Bull Connor and Jim Clark, and wrote himself into the civil rights narrative with the line, ‘‘segregation forever .’’ Ross Barnett whipped Ole Miss football fans into a frenzy one day before thousands violently resisted the integration of that institution. Louisiana’s Jimmie Davis, Georgia’s Marvin Griffin and Lester Maddox, and other governors both led and followed the resistance to black civil rights. While these stories may be well known, scholars have also drawn more complicated portraits: they explore the varieties of response, and narrate politicians’ transitions from outright resistance to more ambivalent ‘‘strategic accommodation’’ and even overt embraces of black equality.3 Earl Black’s Southern Governors and Civil Rights (1976) divides Dixie’s governors into ‘‘segregationists’’ and ‘‘non-segregationists,’’ exploring their divergent strategies and the environments that encouraged each type of leader. More recently, Matthew Lassiter’s The Silent Majority and Randy Sanders’s Mighty Peculiar Elections emphasize the ‘‘New South Governors’’—that group of officeholders elected in and around 1970 whose ambiguous stances on race represented clear steps toward progress.4 3.168.172] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 15:34 GMT) 126 Jason Sokol No comparable literature examines northern...