Perrow Commission

The Commission on Education, known as the Perrow Commission after its chairman, Virginia state senator Mosby Perrow Jr., was a 40-member commission established by Governor of Virginia J. Lindsay Almond on February 5, 1959, after the Virginia Supreme Court in Harrison v. Day and a three-judge federal court in James v. Almond had both struck down significant portions of the Stanley Plan, which had implemented Massive Resistance to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education issued on May 17, 1954, and May 31, 1955.[1] Four legislators (some from the Virginia Senate, others from the House of Delegates) were appointed from each of the ten U.S. Congressional districts in Virginia. Compared to the Gray Commission that Governor Thomas B. Stanley had appointed five years previously, Perrow Commission included more representatives from cities, northern and Western Virginia, although many members served on both commissions.[2]

  1. ^ E. Griffith Dodson, The General Assembly of Virginia 1939-1960 (Richmond: Virginia State Library 1961) p. 396
  2. ^ Ronald L. Heinemann, Harry Byrd of Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996) at pp. 347–50