Massive Resistance - Byrd Organization

Byrd Organization

Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966), Democrat, a former Governor of Virginia, and the state's senior U.S. Senator, was the leader of the powerful Byrd Organization. Continuing a legacy of state domination by segregationist Democrats which began after the fall of the Readjuster Party in the late 19th century, 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.